A simple random sampling of 9th grade students at Baldwin High School could be achieved by writing the names of all 9th grade student on separate cards, placing the cards in a box, mixing them up, and then drawing out a fixed number (e.g., 50 students). Use the sample chart to determine the number of students to include in your survey based on the total number of students representing a population such as all of the 9th grade students at your school.

Another way to select a random sample of 50 students from a class of 450 is to use a random number table or the random number generator in the LabQuest spreadsheet program. Each student would be assigned a different number from 1 to 450. Using LabQuest, you could block out an area in the spreadsheet representing 1000 cells (e.g., 20 columns by 50 rows), select the random number generator, use 1 as your minimum number and 1000 as your maximum, and then press OK. If a value from 1 to 450 arises, you would put the corresponding student in the sample. You would discard any number from 451 to 1000 or repeating numbers. This process would be continued until a total of 50 randomly selected students were identified.