Yes you can do it for non repeating randoms. One possible way is which chandra suggested above. But if you want to avoid loops then it is simple. I will generate population of 10 x 15 and. and randomly on each colum 5 values will be zero, other then 1.
population =ones(10,15); % your population
myrand=randperm(10); % random indexes
population(myrand(1:5),:) = 0; % out 10, each 5 fill be replace. This is total random.
