Eventmath/Lesson plans/California and New York cannot actually decide the popular vote
Appearance
![]() Please help develop this lesson plan!
|
![]() Please help develop this lesson plan!
|
Lesson plan overview | |
---|---|
Title | California and New York cannot actually decide the popular vote |
Assumed knowledge | Students should have some knowledge of the population of the US and basic estimation skills. |
Activities | Students will practice using estimation to hypothesize the proportion of the US that lives in California and New York. They will then verify population sizes to find the true proportion and calculate the relative percent error in their estimate. Students could then find clusters of states that could be used to create a population size that would be greater than 50% of the US. They could then determine the electoral votes those state clusters are apportioned to compare the popular vote share to the electoral vote share. Students will learn about basic voting methods in order to differentiate the "popular vote" from the current method(s) used in the US. They will also learn how to calculate relative percent error. |
Class time | 15-30 minutes |
Source | |
"you see folks say things like "under a popular vote california and new york would decide" and it's like, how many people do you think live in those states?". Twitter. 2022-07-02. Archived from the original on 2022-08-19. | |
Want more lesson plans? Browse | |
This is the main content of the lesson plan. Write as much or as little as needed to convey the main objective, the activities and tasks, and any other essential information. You may organize this content however you'd like.
You can use LaTeX to render mathematical symbols, such as . See the Help:Formula page for more details.
You may also wish to include helpful materials for an instructor, such as:
You're welcome to suggest exercises, activities, assignments, or projects based on the material of this lesson.
(Include these sections at your discretion, keeping in mind that you and others can always edit and add more to these sections later.)
You're welcome to share links to openly-accessible content (e.g. from Khan Academy, YouTube, Wikiversity, etc.) about domain knowledge or math skills students should have. Likewise, you may wish to include contextual information for the instructor.
You're welcome to share references for additional learning and exploration, such as links to other articles, videos, spreadsheets, or computer code. When an open-access substitute is unavailable, links to paywalled sites are acceptable in this section.
Have you found this lesson plan helpful? Tell us about it!
Just click Endorse below to open up an editor and type your comments. When you're ready, they'll appear at the bottom of this section to help other educators looking for good lesson plans.
(Alternatively, if you see a way to improve this lesson plan, be bold and make an edit! You're also welcome to discuss the lesson plan or provide constructive feedback on its Discussion page.)