<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><!DOCTYPE article  PUBLIC '-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.4//EN'  'http://www.docbook.org/xml/4.4/docbookx.dtd'><article><articleinfo><title>FAQ/rand</title><revhistory><revision><revnumber>12</revnumber><date>2016-02-18 11:14:32</date><authorinitials>PeterWatson</authorinitials></revision><revision><revnumber>11</revnumber><date>2013-03-08 10:17:32</date><authorinitials>localhost</authorinitials><revremark>converted to 1.6 markup</revremark></revision><revision><revnumber>10</revnumber><date>2012-07-09 13:35:20</date><authorinitials>PeterWatson</authorinitials><revremark>Revert to revision 6.</revremark></revision><revision><revnumber>9</revnumber><date>2012-07-07 17:36:16</date><authorinitials>vps-1088369-8017.manage.myhosting.com</authorinitials><revremark>LSuezt , [url=http://bgeqftnzueww.com/]bgeqftnzueww[/url], [link=http://slktpwnubwkg.com/]slktpwnubwkg[/link], http://hctznbggnsfo.com/</revremark></revision><revision><revnumber>8</revnumber><date>2012-07-07 01:40:08</date><authorinitials>188.116.250.249</authorinitials><revremark>2dzktS  &lt;a href=&quot;http://xyylhnoloqru.com/&quot;&gt;xyylhnoloqru&lt;/a&gt;</revremark></revision><revision><revnumber>7</revnumber><date>2012-07-05 10:58:28</date><authorinitials>mail.mercadomadrid.com.co</authorinitials><revremark>you have Open Office so you have Calc not Excel.basically you just need to Sort- select all your data in all your clomuns (except the 1st row)- click data- click sort- sort by box gets column G- click</revremark></revision><revision><revnumber>6</revnumber><date>2007-08-15 14:41:58</date><authorinitials>PeterWatson</authorinitials></revision><revision><revnumber>5</revnumber><date>2007-08-15 14:40:31</date><authorinitials>PeterWatson</authorinitials></revision><revision><revnumber>4</revnumber><date>2007-08-15 14:40:03</date><authorinitials>PeterWatson</authorinitials></revision><revision><revnumber>3</revnumber><date>2007-08-15 14:39:24</date><authorinitials>PeterWatson</authorinitials></revision><revision><revnumber>2</revnumber><date>2007-08-15 14:33:22</date><authorinitials>PeterWatson</authorinitials></revision><revision><revnumber>1</revnumber><date>2007-08-15 14:27:00</date><authorinitials>PeterWatson</authorinitials></revision></revhistory></articleinfo><section><title>How do I generate a random sample in EXCEL?</title><para>Let us suppose we wish to randomly sample n cases of data comprising N people. </para><para>1. Put =RAND()*N in row 1 of the column adjacent to the right most data column in the spreadsheet </para><para>2. Copy and paste into remaining N-1 rows </para><para>3. Go to Data&gt;sort on the EXCEL menu and make sure you sort in ascending order by the column you have just created. Click OK. </para><para>4. Delete rows n+1 to N. </para><para>We have randomly permuted the data rows so that the first, or any adjacent, n rows represent a random sample of size n. </para><para>Block randomization and other procedures may also be done on-line <ulink url="https://www.random.org/">here.</ulink> </para><para><ulink url="http://www.stanford.edu/class/msande121/Materials/ExcelTut.pdf">More on the rand() function</ulink>. </para><para><ulink url="https://lsr-wiki-01.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/statswiki/FAQ/rand/statswiki/FAQ/rand/spss#">There is also easy to use syntax to perform this in SPSS.</ulink> </para></section></article>