This problem illustrates an interesting variation of simple random sampling.
a. Open a blank spreadsheet and use the RAND() function to create a column of 1000 random numbers. Don’t freeze them. This is actually a simple random sample from the uniform distribution between 0 and 1. Use the COUNTIF function to count the number of values between 0 and 0.1, between 0.1 and 0.2, and so on. Each such interval should contain about 1/10 of all values. Do they?
b. Repeat part a, generating a second column of random numbers, but now generate the first 100 as uniform between 0 and 0.1, the next 100 as uniform between 0.1 and 0.2, and so on, up to
0.9 to 1. Again, use COUNTIF to find the number of the 1000 values in each of the intervals, although there shouldn’t be any surprises this time. Why might this type of random sampling be preferable to the random sampling in part a?