ABSTRACT
When cookie batter is prepared, it has to be mixed thoroughly so that each cookie will get its share of the raisins and other ingredients. To the statistician, the batter is a population, and each cookie is a sample from it. Only if the batter is well mixed can a randomly chosen cookie be called a random sample. Extension of the sampling idea to human populations is common, important, and often badly described by reporters, so that to avoid being a victim of data pushers everyone should know something about the simple aspects of sampling.
