Mount Hillsdale Hospital has over 4,000 patient files listed alphabetically in its computer system.

The office manager wants to survey a statistical sample of these patients to determine how satisfied they were with service provided by the hospital. She plans to use a telephone survey of 100 patients.

a. Describe how you would attach identification numbers to the patient files; for example, how many digits (and which digits) would you use to indicate the first patient file?

b. Describe how the first random number would be obtained to begin a simple random sample method.

c. How many random digits would you need for each random number you selected?

d. Use Excel or Minitab to generate the list of patients to be surveyed.