Re: Stochastic Queries

>> As a part of some experimental work I've been doing, I need to write what I think is best described as a stochastic quota query. <<

You can write some proprietary kludges, but frankly they have problems with skewed distributions. Better to stick to a stats package to draw your samples (with or without replacements? Tiered? etc.?) There was a good book years ago with a title somethign like a SAMPLER OF SAMPLING that went into the details.

One trick I have used is to build a table:

CREATE TABLE Samples
(seq_nbr INTEGER NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY,
 random_nbr INTEGER NOT NULL); -- or whatever data type you need

then load it with the particular random numbers I wanrted from a stat package. More work, but MUCH better results. Received on Mon Sep 10 2007 - 18:45:25 CEST