Random Response Unit
The text refers to two TrueBasic programs to simulate a
random survey. The same simulation can be done in MATLAB
using the scripts below. Just save the scripts to your
work space, and then let MATLAB know that this is the
directory where you want it to look for them. The names
below are like the names in the text, but of course you can
save them under any convenient name, and then refer to them
that way -- just be sure that they have the file extension .m
ran1resp.m expects you to define
three variables before running it:
- GrpSize: the number of people in the group
- YesInGrp: the number of people in the group who should answer
"yes"
- NRep: the number of times you want to simulate the survey, for
the purpose of averaging the results.
ran2resp.m works the same way as
ran1resp.m, but allows you to define an Estimate of the true
fraction of yes people. It reports an estimate for
the bias in your estimate(!)
The bias is the average difference of your estimate
from the true fraction of yes people. It
cannot report the true bias, but only an estimate of it
based on NRep simulations.
You can add lines to look at other things, such as the
distribution of the reported estimates of bias.