Question

There are 398 students currently enrolled in a statistics course at your school. You wish to form

a sample of 4 students to answer some survey questions. Select the students who will belong to

the simple random sample by using the randomly generated number table below by starting in the

fourth row and first column.

35931 89035 23653 46370 28433

62632 81258 40557 19325 43161

28330 34629 79010 22483 95383

12441 20033 11802 03263 75380

Please let me know what fourth row and what first column is, and how to solve this problem easily.. And please give me the answer for this question.

Answer 1

There are 398 students and we want to select 4 students randomly from this set.

First let us number the students from 1 to 398. It does not matter how we assign these numbers to the students.

then we will pick a random number of size 3 digits and select the student corresponding to the number. If the random number picked is greater than 398 then we will discard the number and get the next number in the series.

The fourth row first column of the random number table is highlighted below

1. We will pick the first 3 digits from 4th row, 1st column, which is 124. This number is less than 398 and hence we will pick the student numbered 124 into the sample
2. The next 3 digits is 412 ( get the next 2 digits of column 1 and 1 digit from column 2). There is no student numbered 412. We discard this
3. Next 3 digits are 003. We pick the student numbered 3 into the sample
4. next 3 digits are 311. We pick the student numbered 311
5. Next 3 digits are 802. We discard
6. Next 3 digits are 032. We pick the student numbered 32

Now we have a sample of 4 students. The students we picked have numbers 124,3,311 and 32