Randomness & Fair Selection
The wheel is designed to make a visible random choice from the entries currently displayed. This page explains what “random” means in our implementation and where its limits are.
How a Winner Is Selected
When you press Spin, the script chooses an entry index first. The wheel animation is then calculated so the selected slice finishes under the pointer. In other words, the animation displays the selection; it is not a physics simulation that determines the winner.
Web Crypto
When supported by the browser, the wheel uses window.crypto.getRandomValues(). The code uses rejection sampling before mapping the random integer into the available range, which avoids simple modulo bias.
Math.random()
If Web Crypto is unavailable, the tool falls back to JavaScript’s Math.random() so the wheel can still function. This fallback should not be treated as cryptographically secure randomness.
Does Every Name Have the Same Chance?
Each entry currently shown on the wheel occupies one selectable position, so each displayed position is treated equally by the winner-selection function. The custom-entry editor removes duplicate lines before applying a list, which also helps prevent accidental duplicate entries from changing the odds.
Generator datasets should also be deduplicated during publishing. If the same name is intentionally represented more than once in a source list, that can affect how often it appears in generated subsets, so dataset quality matters.
What the Wheel Is and Is Not For
The wheel is intended for creative decisions, classroom activities, brainstorming, games, informal giveaways and general-purpose random selection. It is not a certified random-number system and should not be used where audited, regulated or cryptographically secure randomness is required.
- Do not use it for passwords, security keys or cryptographic secrets.
- Do not use it as the sole mechanism for regulated gambling or legally controlled drawings.
- Do not rely on it where an independently audited selection process is required.
We prefer transparent behavior over vague “true randomness” claims.
The method above describes how the current wheel works so you can decide whether it is suitable for your use case.