Apportionment Algorithm

Ever wonder how our government apportions the 435 seats in the United States House of Representatives?

Well, they use an algorithm called the “huntington-hill method”. I took a good look at the algorithm and made it into a C program:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <math.h>

#define NUMSTATES   50
#define MAXSEATS    435

void highestAverage(int state, int *representatives, double *divisors){
    double divisor;
    divisor = sqrt(representatives[state] * (representatives[state]+1));
    divisors[state] = divisor;
}

int getLargest(int *populations, double *divisors){
    int max,i;
    max = 0;
    for(i=1;i<NUMSTATES;i++){
        if(populations[i]/divisors[i] > populations[max]/divisors[max]){
            max = i;
        }
    }
    return max;
}

void printArray(char *stateNames[],int *representatives){
    int i,counter;
    counter = 0;
    for(i=0;i<NUMSTATES;i++){
        printf("%s - %d \n",stateNames[i],representatives[i]);
        counter = counter+representatives[i];
    }
    printf("total %d \n",counter);
}

int main(void){
    int populationArray[NUMSTATES] = {4661900,686293,6500180,2855390,36756666,
4939456,3501252,873092,18328340,9685744,1288198,1523816,12901563,6376792,
3002555,2802134,4269245,4410796,1316456,5633597,6497967,10003422,5220393,
2938618,5911605,967440,1783432,2600167,1315809,8682661,1984356,19490297,
9222414,641481,11485910,3642361,3790060,12448279,1050788,4479800,804194,
6214888,24326974,2736424,621270,7769089,6549224,1814468,5627967,532668};
    int representativesArray[NUMSTATES];
    double divisorsArray[NUMSTATES];
    char *stateNamesArray[NUMSTATES] = {"Alabama", "Alaska", "Arizona", "Arkansas",
 "California", "Colorado", "Connecticut", "Delaware", "Florida", "Georgia", "Hawaii",
 "Idaho", "Illinois", "Indiana", "Iowa", "Kansas", "Kentucky", "Louisiana", "Maine",
 "Maryland", "Massachusetts", "Michigan", "Minnesota", "Mississippi", "Missouri",
 "Montana", "Nebraska", "Nevada", "New Hampshire", "New Jersey", "New Mexico",
"New York", "North Carolina", "North Dakota", "Ohio", "Oklahoma", "Oregon",
 "Pennsylvania", "Rhode Island", "South Carolina", "South Dakota", "Tennessee",
"Texas", "Utah", "Vermont", "Virginia", "Washington","West Virginia", "Wisconsin",
 "Wyoming" };

    int largest;
    int i,j;
    for(i=0;i<NUMSTATES;i++){
        representativesArray[i] = 1;
        highestAverage(i,representativesArray,divisorsArray);
    }
    for(j=NUMSTATES;j<MAXSEATS;j++){
        largest = getLargest(populationArray,divisorsArray);
        representativesArray[largest]++;
        highestAverage(largest,representativesArray,divisorsArray);
    }
    printArray(stateNamesArray,representativesArray);
    return 0;
}

Granted that the population information for each state is correct and up-to-date, the program should give you the exact number of representatives per state.

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