To American voters, the process of electing a president and other officials may be difficult to explain and understand. For America’s math teachers, the system represents a gold mine for real-life lessons on ratios, statistics and data.
And by basing the lessons on elections, teachers can help put students on the path to becoming informed and engaged voters later in life, according to a 2020 survey of 2,232 young adults ages 18-21.
Americans don’t vote directly for the president. Instead, a group of electors vote for the candidate who wins the popular vote in that state. In most states, whoever wins the most votes wins all the state’s electors, or “electoral votes.”
Not all states have the same number of electors. Each state starts with two electoral votes, based on the two U.S. senators in each state. States receive additional electors based on the number of representatives they have in the House of Representatives, which depends on a state’s population. The number of representatives in the House, however, has been set at 435 since 1929, despite a huge and varied increase in the population. This means the number of people represented by each member of the U.S. House – the ratio of people to representative – varies considerably, as shown in a table from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Armed with this background, math teachers can use the census data on population and ratios to teach students the following math – and voting – topics.
Topic 1: Ratio
To calculate a state’s representative ratio, the number of people for every one representative, divide the population by the number of the state’s representatives in the U.S. House. In 2020, for example, Montana had two congressional representatives and a population of 1,085,407. The representative ratio was 542,704:1 – 1,085,407 divided by 2 – or 542,704 residents for each representative.
Topic 2: Minimum and maximum
In any set of numbers, the minimum is the smallest number in the set and the maximum is the largest number. For example, using the representative ratios from the 2020 census data, Montana’s ratio of 542,704:1 is the smallest – the minimum – and Delaware’s ratio of 990,837:1 is the largest, or the maximum.
Topic 3: The shape, center and spread of data
Shape means how data, such as the ratios of residents to representatives, looks on a chart or graph. Teachers can use a histogram, a kind of graph used to illustrate how data is distributed: evenly, skewed to one side, or with some numbers as outliers, at a distance from the other numbers.
The ratios can also be used to explain how to find the “center” of data, its mean or median. The mean is the average, found by adding all the numbers in the set and dividing by how many there are. For example, adding the ratios for all the states and dividing by 50. The median is the middle number when all numbers are placed in order from minimum to maximum. Simple spreadsheet formulas are available online to help students find both.
To American voters, the process of electing a president and other officials may be difficult to explain and understand. For America’s math teachers, the system represents a gold mine for real-life lessons on ratios, statistics and data.
And by basing the lessons on elections, teachers can help put students on the path to becoming informed and engaged voters later in life, according to a 2020 survey of 2,232 young adults ages 18-21.
Americans don’t vote directly for the president. Instead, a group of electors vote for the candidate who wins the popular vote in that state. In most states, whoever wins the most votes wins all the state’s electors, or “electoral votes.”
Not all states have the same number of electors. Each state starts with two electoral votes, based on the two U.S. senators in each state. States receive additional electors based on the number of representatives they have in the House of Representatives, which depends on a state’s population. The number of representatives in the House, however, has been set at 435 since 1929, despite a huge and varied increase in the population. This means the number of people represented by each member of the U.S. House – the ratio of people to representative – varies considerably, as shown in a table from the U.S. Census Bureau.
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