ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Biproportional apportionment

Imagine you have a tray of cookies that you want to share fairly amongst your friends. However, you want to make sure that everyone gets a proportional amount based on their appetite.

Now, let's say you have 3 friends: Alice, Bob, and Charlie. Alice is a big eater, Bob is a moderate eater, and Charlie is a small eater. You also have 12 cookies in total.

To determine how many cookies each friend should get, you could use a method called biproportional apportionment. This means that you'll divide the cookies based on two factors: the number of people and their appetites.

First, you'll calculate the total appetite of all your friends. Alice has an appetite of 5, Bob has an appetite of 3, and Charlie has an appetite of 2. Altogether, their total appetite is 10 (5+3+2).

Next, you'll divide the total number of cookies by the total appetite to get the "cookie unit" value. In this case, the cookie unit would be 1.2 (12/10).

Finally, you'll multiply this cookie unit value by each person's appetite to determine how many cookies they get. So, Alice would get 6 cookies (5 x 1.2), Bob would get 3.6 cookies (3 x 1.2), and Charlie would get 2.4 cookies (2 x 1.2).

In this way, everyone gets a fair share of the cookies based on their individual appetites. This is what biproportional apportionment is all about - dividing resources in a way that is proportional to different factors, such as number or size.