Sampling involves selecting and evaluating a portion of a
population (people, things, processes, documents, etc.) to draw conclusions
about the entire population. The advantage to this approach is that it avoids
the time, effort and expense of a comprehensive examination. Utilizing
statistics enhances the quality and effectiveness of sampling by quantifying
sample sizes and how well the sample represents the whole population. Sampling
has applications in health care, auditing, manufacturing, marketing, social
sciences and many other areas.
EasySample is a tool for statistical sampling. It supports
several types of attribute and variable sampling and includes a random number
generator and standard deviation calculator. Attribute sampling is used to
estimate how many or what percentage of items have a certain
characteristic, for example, defects or errors. Variable sampling is used to
estimate numerical values (how much). For example, monetary values,
ages, volumes, weights and sizes-anything that is variable in nature. Of
course, not all of the uses for EasySample have to do with sampling. Another
purpose might be to use the random number generator to pick lotto numbers!
To make the program easy to use, the interface is designed to
be consistent, intuitive and minimize user effort. The user need only be
concerned with entering basic sample parameters as the software handles lookup
tables, formulas and other complications. Results may be saved or read in CSV
(spreadsheet compatible) or XML (Internet compatible) file formats or printed.
