stringseed.sampling: Use Any Alphanumeric Input as a Seed
In mrdwab/mrdwabmisc: Miscellaneous R functions, mostly for data processing

Description Usage Arguments Value Author(s) References See Also Examples

The stringseed.sampling function is designed as a batch sampling function that allows the user to specify any alphanumeric input as the seed per sample in the batch.

1	stringseed.sampling(seedbase, N, n, write.output = FALSE)

`seedbase`	A vector of seeds to be used for sampling.
`N`	The "population" from which to draw the sample.
`n`	The desired number of samples.
`write.output`	Logical. Should the output be written to a file? Defaults to `FALSE`. If `TRUE`, a csv file is written with the sample "metadata", and a plain text file is written with the details of the resulting sample. The names of the files written are `"Sample frame generated on {date the script was run} .csv"` and `"Samples generated on {date the script was run} .txt"` and will be found in your current working directory.

This function returns a list with the class "stringSeedSampling" and uses a custom print method. The list items are:

input: The "metadata" to remind you of your input parameters.
samples: The samples resulting from the specified input parameters. In the case of batch sampling being used, samples will be a named list.

Use print.default(your-object-here) to view the underlying list.

Ananda Mahto

See: http://stackoverflow.com/q/10910698/1270695

digest

# We'll use a data.frame with a list of village names, the population,
#   and the desired samples as our columns. The function will use the
#   village names to generate a unique seed for each village before
#   drawing the sample.
myListOfPlaces <- data.frame(
villageName = c("Melakkal", "Sholavandan", "T. Malaipatti"),
population = c(120, 130, 140),
requiredSample = c(30, 25, 12))
myListOfPlaces

stringseed.sampling(seedbase = myListOfPlaces$villageName,
               N = myListOfPlaces$population,
               n = myListOfPlaces$requiredSample)

# Manual verification of the samples generated for Melakkal village
#   (for which the automatically generated seed was 1331891848)
set.seed(1331891848)
sample(120, 30)

# What about using the function on a single input?
stringseed.sampling("Santa Barbara", 1920, 100)