How do I make a random sample?

[Confused student]

Im a uni student and i have a worksheet with 474 data entries. I need to
create a random sample and i have no idea how to do it. I have instructions
for excel 2003, but i have excel 2007. Please help asap!!!!!

 

[Kevin B]

Try the following formula, substituting the $A:$A with the column letter of
the column that has your data, and the range $A2:$A397 with the range in
column A that contains the values you want to sample.

=INDEX($A:$A,RANDBETWEEN(1,COUNTA($A2:$A397)),RANDBETWEEN(1,1))

Copy the formula down x number of rows based on the number of samples you
want, where 10 samples = 10 rows.

Hope this helps.

 

[Ed Cones]

I add a helper column with the Rand() function in each cell. It puts a
random number in each cell. I then sort by that column and take the top ten
percent or whatever I need for the sampling.

 

[Kevin B]

In my other post I forgot to mention that you press the F9 key whenever you
want to refresh your random sampling of values

 

[jlclyde]

Im a uni student and i have a worksheet with 474 data entries. I need to
create a random sample and i have no idea how to do it. I have instructions
for excel 2003, but i have excel 2007. Please help asap!!!!!

There are several ways you can do it. I have a Black Belt in Lean Six
Sigma and when I am under the gun and do nto want to run a chunk of
code in VBA I will use =RandBetween(1,1000). I will copy down next to
the data column. Then I will copy all of the randbetweens and
pasteSpecial as Values. Then sort asending based on the randbetween
column. Your top 40 are your samples. If it is a large data set, I
will always do it in VBA. then you cen ask it not to have any
reapeating numbers.

Hope this helps,
Jay