What it is
The Decision Wheel is a spinning wheel you fill with your own options. Type one per line, spin, and the pointer lands on one of them.
Unlike a coin, which handles two alternatives, the wheel takes as many as you want, and it shows the draw happening in front of everybody.
Is the draw fair?
Yes. Every spin uses the browser's random number generator, and all the slices have exactly the same chance, regardless of how big they look on screen or where the wheel stopped last time.
Two things usually confuse people.
- The wheel has no memory. If "pizza" came up twice in a row, it has the same chance on the third spin as anything else.
- Repeating an option increases its odds. Write "pizza" on two lines and it takes two slices, so it gets double the chance. That is useful on purpose: it is how you weight an option.
Wheel, coin or picker
| Situation | Tool |
|---|---|
| Two options | Coin flip |
| Several written options, with an animation everyone can watch | Decision Wheel |
| A long list of names, no animation | Random picker |
| A number inside a range | Random number picker |
| Splitting people into teams | Team generator |
Where the wheel helps most
Its advantage over a draw on paper is that everyone sees the result at the same time, and nobody has to trust whoever did the drawing. That is why it works in a classroom for picking who presents, in a meeting for setting the speaking order, on a livestream for giving away a prize, and at home for ending the argument about which film to watch.
Everything runs in your browser, with no install and no account. The options you type never leave your device.