📜 Recent History
📜 Recent History
Draw names or split a list into teams
This page has two tools that work from the same kind of list. Random Draw picks one or more names without repeats and reveals them one at a time in the order they were drawn — handy for choosing a raffle winner, deciding who presents first, or calling on students fairly. Random Grouping shuffles everyone and splits the list into balanced teams, either by the number of groups you want or by roughly how many people should be in each.
How to use it
- Type or paste names into the Enter Names box. Put one per line, or separate them with commas, semicolons or tabs; blank entries are ignored. The “Names loaded” counter confirms how many were recognised.
- For a draw, set How many to draw and press Start Drawing. After the animation the winners are listed as 1, 2, 3… in drawing order.
- For teams, open the Random Grouping tab, choose By Group Count or By People Per Group, enter the number and press Start Grouping.
- Use Copy Results to copy a numbered list or the group lists as plain text, or Re-draw / Re-group for a fresh result from the same list.
- Past results appear under Recent History; click one to show it again, or press Clear to delete that history.
How the selection works
When you press the button, the whole list is shuffled with the Fisher–Yates algorithm. Each swap position is chosen with the browser’s crypto.getRandomValues() random source, using rejection sampling so that no position is favoured. The result is that every possible ordering of the list is equally likely. A draw of N names simply takes the first N entries of that shuffled list, so nobody can be picked twice in the same draw. The rolling-name animation is decoration only: the winners are fixed at the moment you click.
For grouping, the shuffled list is dealt out like playing cards — first name to Group 1, second to Group 2, and so on — so group sizes never differ by more than one. In By People Per Group mode the page first works out how many groups are needed (total people divided by group size, rounded up) and then deals evenly. Ten people with 4 per group therefore become three groups of 4, 3 and 3 rather than 4, 4 and 2.
Names never leave your browser. The last 10 draws and last 10 groupings, including the names in them, are kept in your browser’s local storage (keys draw_history_draw and draw_history_group) so the history survives a reload. On a shared computer, press Clear when you are done.
Frequently asked questions
Does every name have the same chance?
Yes, as long as each person appears once. Identical lines are treated as separate entries, so a name listed twice has twice the chance. Remove duplicates first if that is not what you want.
Can the same person be drawn more than once?
Not within one draw. If you want draws with replacement, draw one name at a time and press Re-draw for each pick; every draw starts again from the full list.
Why are my groups not exactly the size I asked for?
Unless the total divides evenly, some groups must be one person smaller. The tool spreads the difference across groups instead of leaving one small group at the end.
Is the randomness “true” randomness?
It comes from the browser’s cryptographically secure pseudo-random generator, seeded by the operating system. That is unpredictable in practice and fair for classroom or event use, although it is algorithmic rather than physical randomness. The page keeps no audit record, so for a prize draw that must be verifiable, run it in front of the participants or record the screen.