Sampling from a population of unknown size

Introduction to uniform sampling algorithms for streaming items

A sampling task

Bob works in quality control at an electronic components factory. Among his tasks, every day he must inspect k different products in order to identify possible defects and to assess the overall smoothness of the production process. The products must be chosen randomly and following a uniform probability of extraction (i.e., uniform sampling).

However, the number N of products leaving the factory …

algorithms markov-chains population python sampling statistics