Random sampling from a large dataset

Question

There\'s a large database from which I have extracted a study population. For comparison purposes, I would like to select a control group that has similar characteristics.

Answer 1

select
   T1.sex,
   T1.decades,
   T1.counts,
   T2.patid

from (

   select 
      sex, 
      age/10 as decades,
      COUNT(*) as counts
   from (

      select  m.patid,
         m.sex,
         DATEPART(year,min(c.admitdate)) -m.yrdob as Age
      from members as m
      inner join claims as c on c.patid=m.PATID
      group by m.PATID, m.sex,m.yrdob
   )x 
   group by sex, Age/10
) as T1
join (
   --right here is where the random sampling occurs
    SELECT TOP 50--this is the total number of peolpe in our dataset
      patid
      ,sex
      ,decades

   from (
      select  m.patid,
         m.sex,
         (DATEPART(year,min(c.admitdate)) -m.yrdob)/10 as decades
      from members as m
      inner join claims as c on c.patid=m.PATID
      group by m.PATID, m.sex, m.yrdob

   ) T2
      order by NEWID()
) as T2
on T2.sex = T1.sex
and T2.decades = T1.decades 

EDIT: I had posted another question similar to this in which I found that my results weren't in fact random, but they were only the TOP N results. I had ordered by newid() in the outermost query and all that was doing was shuffling around the exact same result set. From a question that is now closed, I found out that I needed to use the TOP keyword along with order by newid() in the commented line in the above query.