11.3 Standard Divisors, Standard Quotas, and the Apportionment Problem

The following table provides a comparison of the number of faculty members in each department at a particular college to the student head count in that department and the number of class sections in that department in the Spring semester. Use this information to answer the questions.

1. Determine the ratios for each department: S to C, C to T, S to T, F to P
2. What are the units of the ratios that yo…

Refer to the information given in the example.

1. If there are 32 class sections each semester in the Fine Art department, and the same ratio is used to determine the number of faculty members, how many faculty members would you expect to see in the Fine Art department?
2. If the Health Sciences department has 6 full-time faculty members, how many part-time faculty members are in the department?

the table contains a list of the five U.S. states with the greatest number of representatives in the U.S. House of Representatives, along with the population of that state in 2021. Use the information in the table to answer the questions.

1. What is the ratio of State Population to Representative Seats for each state to the nearest hundred thousand?
2. What is the ratio of Representative Seats to Stat…

As of this writing, the Census.gov website U.S. Population clock showed a population of 332,693,997. There are 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. Find the standard divisor rounded to the nearest tenth.

The public schools in a certain county have been allotted 349 school resource officers to be distributed among 327 public schools attended by approximately 271,500 students.

1. Identify the states, seats, house size, state population, and total population in this apportionment scenario.
2. Describe the ratio the standard divisor represents in this scenario and calculate the standard divisor to the near…

Example 27 outlined that the Census.gov website U.S. Population clock showed a population of 330,147,881, there are 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the standard divisor was 758,960.6 people per representative. The state of California has a population of approximately 39,613,000. Use these values to determine the standard quota for California to two decimal places.

The science department of a high school has received a grant for 34 laptops. They plan to apportion them among their six classrooms based on each classroom’s student capacity. Use the values in the table below to find the standard quota for each classroom.