Population paradox
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The population paradox is a counterintuitive result of some procedures for apportionment.
Consider a legislature with a fixed number of "seats" to be divided among some number of districts ("states") according to the populations of the states. The population paradox occurs when two states have populations increasing at different rates and the state with the greater growth rate loses a legislative seat to the state with the lower growth rate.
The paradox arises because of rounding in the procedure for dividing the seats. See the apportionment rules for the United States Congress for an example.
