RE: Random Numbers

[SOPKrules@aol.com]

This may not be the most practical in this day and age, but why not try using a book of random numbers.  Pick the page or pages you wish to work from and then develop your own procedure for choosing the numbers from the page?  Not the most technology savy way, but should be a solid approach and one that would probably hold up in a court of law (assuming you used a reputable, published work).

How would this type of random number generation be any different from the form excel uses?  I guess if you included in your procedure use of different pages on each subsequent draw you would be good to go and not get the same sequence given your procedure.

An interesting topic.

By the way, there are some insights into the generation and use of random numbers in the Statistical Quality Control Handbook and Dr. D's Sample Design in Business Research.  I don't have it handy, but I gotta believe there is some good stuff in Dr. D's Some Theory of Sampling too.