Depending on the type of data you have, this process will vary. However, you should start all data in the “A” column. For example: you might place your users’ names in the “A” column and their responses to a survey (e. g. , “yes” or “no”) in the “B” column.
After doing this, any data that was in the “A” column will be relisted as being in the “B” column and so on.
If Excel attempts to automatically format your “RAND” command, delete the formatting and re-type the command.
For a Mac, you’ll hold down ⌘ Command instead of Control. You can also right-click the “RAND” cell and then select Copy.
Clicking the “A1” cell and highlighting from there can cause a sorting error.
For example, if your data in columns “B” and “C” extends all the way down to cell 100, you would hold down ⇧ Shift and click “A100” to select all “A” cells from A2 to A100.
Again, Mac users will need to hold down ⌘ Command instead of Control.
This includes the random sample numbers to the left of your data as well.
For example, if your data takes up two columns of 50 cells each, you would select “C50” while holding down ⇧ Shift. You can also click and drag your cursor from the top left corner to the bottom right corner of your data (or vice versa) to highlight it.
If you’re using a Mac, you can click using two fingers (or hold down Ctrl and click) to bring up the context menu.
Select the first, last, or middle half of the data. If your number of data points is too large to warrant this, you can also settle on a lower fraction (for example, the first eighth of the data). Select all odd- or even-numbered data. For example, in a set of 10 data points, you would either pick numbers 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9, or 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10. Select a number of random data points. This method works best for large sets of data where picking half of the information is too ambitious.
