Random Number Wheel

Pick a number nobody can dispute

Set the range, spin, and the wheel lands on one. The value of doing it this way rather than in your head is that everyone watched - which is the whole point when a number decides who wins something.

Every draw uses your browser's cryptographic random number generator, the same source used for security tokens, and integers are drawn by rejection sampling. That last detail matters more than it sounds: taking a plain modulus of a random value makes the low numbers in a range slightly more likely, and rejection sampling is what removes that bias.

Setting the range you need

The wheel starts at 1 to 10. Any range is a matter of editing the list: paste 1 to 100 for a hundred-entry raffle, 1 to 6 to replace a die, or 0 to 9 for a single digit.

Past about sixty slices the numbers get small to read on a phone, though the draw is unaffected. If you need a wide range and a readable wheel, drawing a digit at a time and combining them is often more practical - spin twice on 0 to 9 for anything up to 99.

Ranges people actually use

• 1 to 100. Raffles, ticket draws, and any 'pick a number between one and a hundred' game.
• 1 to 10. The default. Quick decisions, classroom games, and picking a place in a queue.
• 1 to 6 or 1 to 20. Dice replacements for board games and tabletop role-playing.
• Non-consecutive numbers. Nothing requires a range - put only the ticket numbers you actually sold on the wheel and the draw is limited to real entrants.

Running a raffle or giveaway

Assign each entrant a number, put the range on the wheel, and spin with the screen shared or recorded. A visible draw answers the suspicion that the winner was decided in advance, which an announcement never quite does.

For multiple prizes, turn on Remove so each drawn number comes off the wheel. That gives first, second and third place in three spins with no chance of the same number twice.

If you only sold tickets 1 to 47, put 1 to 47 on the wheel rather than 1 to 50 and re-spinning on a miss. Re-spinning is where draws lose their credibility.

In the classroom

A number wheel does the work of a bag of numbered cards without the bag. Pick a page, a question, a table, a student number - all with the class watching rather than the teacher choosing.

It also teaches its own subject. Turn Count on, spin fifty times, and the tally shows the distribution flattening toward even. That is a more convincing demonstration of the law of large numbers than asserting it.

What is on the Random Number Wheel

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