Comparing magazine articles (sampling help)?

Question

Hi there!
I'm comparing two magazine articles to find the word length.

1st mag is roughly 400 words
2nd is roughly 650


I want to use a 100 word sample as it should be enough to get an overall view of the word length.
I thought of using a calculator (or computer) to randomly
generate the 100 words to pick out. But I'm not clear on how this should be done..

So would I need to generate 100 random numbers between 1-400 for the first magazine and 1-850 for the 2nd?
I hope this makes some sense.

Answer 1

The random number generators on most calculators generate a decimal between 0 and 1. To get a random sample, you will need to multiply those random decimals by the total number of words in the article. On a TI series graphing calculator, for the first article, your screen would say

400rand

Keep hitting ENTER, and the part before each decimal will tell you which word to pick.

You may find it easier to do a systematic sample (chose every however many words). To do this, take the total number of words in the article divided by how many words you want to pick (like 650 / 100 = 6.5). You'd choose every 7th word. You can find a random place to start by using your random number generator, and then pick every 7th word from there, rotating back to the beginning when you get to the end.

Answer 2

You should be able to get a random number by hitting the 'Random' button on your calculator; this creates a number from 0.01 to 1.00. You then multiply it by the total number of words in your article to get a random number between 1 and your maximum.

I hope this helps.

Answer 3

Yes that's the way we did it in statistics. You can get random number sheets, but im SURE there are many numbers generators on the net.