Random Picker (Wheel of Names)

How the list is read

The box is split on line breaks only. Each line is trimmed of leading and trailing spaces, and empty lines are ignored, which is what the entries counter reflects. Commas, semicolons and tabs are not separators, so a line reading Ann, Bob is a single entry called Ann, Bob. If you are pasting from a spreadsheet, copy a single column so each cell lands on its own line.

Duplicate lines are kept as separate entries. That is the only way to weight the draw: paste a name three times and it holds three of the tickets. With Ann listed three times and Bob, Cara and Dan once each, Ann wins 3 of 6 draws on average.

How the winner is selected

The index of the winner is floor(Math.random() × number of entries), so every line has exactly a 1 in n chance. The choice is made before the suspense animation starts; the fifteen names that flash past at 70 ms intervals are random picks shown for effect and have no influence on the result. Math.random is the browser's general-purpose pseudo-random generator, which is fine for classrooms, giveaways and deciding who presents first.

What the remove-winner option really removes

When the box is ticked, the tool deletes exactly the line that was drawn, identified by its position, and leaves identical lines elsewhere in the list alone. If you weighted Ann with three lines and she wins, one of them goes and the entries counter drops by one, so she keeps two tickets for the next pick. Two different people who share a name are likewise treated as separate entries; only the drawn one leaves the list.

Nothing records who has already won. For a raffle with several prizes, write each winner down as it appears, because the Winner card is replaced on the next pick and the removed line is gone from the box.

Shuffle order: random sequences and teams

Shuffle order runs a Fisher–Yates shuffle, which makes every possible ordering equally likely: 120 orderings for 5 entries, 3,628,800 for 10. The original box is left untouched and the shuffled result appears as a numbered list, so you can shuffle again until you are happy without re-pasting.

• Presentation or interview order: shuffle once and go down the numbered list.
• Two teams: shuffle, then take the top half of the list as team A and the rest as team B.
• Seating or pairing: pair positions 1 and 2, 3 and 4, and so on.
• Picking a winner clears the shuffled list, and shuffling clears the winner card, so do one job at a time.

What this picker does not have

• No spinning wheel graphic. The 'wheel' is a card that flashes names and stops on the winner.
• No weights field; repeat a line to weight an entry.
• No saved lists, sharing links or export. The list is lost when you leave the page, so keep a copy elsewhere.
• No limit on list size in the code, though thousands of lines make the textarea slow to scroll.