Suppose you have been asked to run a public opinion poll related to an upcoming election...

Suppose you have been asked to run a public opinion poll related to an upcoming election. There are 230 precincts in the city, and you need to randomly select 50 registered voters from each precinct. Suppose that each precinct has 1,000 registered voters and it is possible to obtain a list of these persons. You assign the numbers 1 to 1,000 to the 1,000 people on each list, with 1 to the first person on the list and 1,000 to the last person. You need to next obtain a random sample of 50 numbers from the numbers 1 to 1,000. The names on the sampling frame corresponding to these 50 numbers will be the 50 persons selected for the poll. A Minitab program is shown here for purposes of illustration. Note that you would need to run this program 230 separate times to obtain a new random sample for each of the 230 precincts.

Follow these steps:

Click on Calc.

Click on Random Data.

Click on Integer.

Type 5 in the Generate rows of data box.

Type c1– c10 in the Store in Column(s): box.

Type 1 in the Minimum value: box.

Type 1000 in the Maximum value: box.

Click on OK.

Click on File.

Click on Print Worksheet.

a. Using either a random number table or a computer program, generate a second random sample of 50 numbers from the numbers 1 to 1,000.

b. Give several reasons why you need to generate a different set of random numbers for each of the precincts. Why not use the same set of 50 numbers for all 230 precincts?