Random Picker

How to use the random picker

Put each option on its own line in the List of items box. The items can be words, phrases, numbers, codes or full sentences; whatever is on a line is treated as a single item. A single column pasted from a spreadsheet works directly, and empty lines or extra spaces around an item are ignored.

Keep Number of items to pick at 1 to get one result, then press Pick Randomly. The list can contain up to 10,000 items. The page shows the winner under Randomly picked item; with more than one pick the heading changes to items.

Picking several items in one go

Increase the number to pick, up to 1,000, and the tool draws that many items without putting any back. The result lists them in the order they came out, so the first line is the first draw. The number of picks has to be lower than the number of lines in the list, otherwise you get an error explaining that the list needs at least one extra item.

possible groups of k from n = n! ÷ (k! × (n − k)!)

Example: from 8 restaurants you choose 3 for next week. There are 8 × 7 × 6 = 336 ordered results (first night, second night, third night) and 336 ÷ 6 = 56 different sets of three if the order does not matter. The combination calculator and permutation calculator work out these counts for any list size.

Giving some items better odds

Every line is one ticket in the hat, so an item that is typed more than once has proportionally more chance. This is the simplest way to weight a choice without any extra settings.

Example: you want dinner to be pizza about half the time. Enter pizza three times and add sushi, tacos and curry once each. That makes 6 lines, so a single pick gives pizza 3 ÷ 6 = 50% and each of the others 1 ÷ 6 ≈ 16.7%. If you draw 2 items, the chance that at least one pizza line appears is 1 − (3/6 × 2/5) = 80%, and note that both picks could be pizza, because two separate pizza lines are two separate entries.

If you do not want duplicates by accident, check the list for repeated lines before you draw.

How the choice is made

The picker gives each line a position number and uses the browser's cryptographic random source to choose among the positions still left. It then moves the choice out of the pool and repeats until it has the requested count. This is a partial Fisher-Yates shuffle, and values that would bias the result towards the lower positions are rejected and redrawn. On every pick, each remaining item has exactly the same probability.

Equal odds do not mean a balanced history. Three picks in a row can all be the same kind of item with a small list, and that is simply what independent random choices look like.

Which tool should I use?

• Names of people for a raffle or a classroom draw: the random name picker uses the same engine with wording suited to names.
• Random numbers rather than listed items: the random number generator.
• A complete new order for the whole list rather than a few winners: the list randomizer.
• Random colors for a design, game or palette: the random color generator.

Typical uses for the random picker itself include choosing a prize from a tombola list, selecting a task or chore, deciding where to eat, or picking a movie when nobody can agree. If you are drawing prizes one by one, remove an item from the list after it is awarded so it cannot come out again.