How to Calculate Sampling Without Replacement with HYPGEOM.DIST in Excel

Use HYPGEOM.DIST to judge an inspection sample: the chance of finding 0, at most 2, or too many faulty items.

You will learn to

• Find the chance a sample misses every faulty item
• Find the chance of at most k faulty items
• Find the chance a lot is rejected

How it works

HYPGEOM.DIST is the right distribution when you draw a sample from a small, finite group without putting items back — inspecting 15 screens from a shipment of 120, or auditing 20 invoices out of 300. Each item drawn changes the odds for the next, which the binomial distribution ignores.

Its arguments are the successes in the sample, the sample size, the successes in the population and the population size, then TRUE for cumulative or FALSE for exactly. It is the core of acceptance-sampling plans: "reject the lot if more than 1 defect is found".

=HYPGEOM.DIST(0,15,9,120,FALSE)