Mount Hillsdale Hospital has more than 4,000 patient files listed alphabetically in its computer system. The office manager wants to survey a statistical sample of these patients to determine how satisfied they were with service provided by the hospital. She plans to use a telephone survey of 100 patients.
a. Describe how you would attach identification numbers to the patient files; for example, how many digits (and which digits) would you use to indicate the first patient file?
b. Describe how the first random number would be obtained to begin a simple random sample method.
c. How many random digits would you need for each random number you selected?