Shuffle any list, pick a fair winner
Paste a list — names for a draw, tasks to order, students to call on, songs for a playlist — and this tool shuffles it into a genuinely random order and presents the result as a numbered table, with the top entry highlighted as the first pick. Use the whole order (running order, draft order, presentation order) or only the winner (raffles, giveaways, "who's making tea"). Your list never leaves your device: the shuffle happens in your browser, which matters when the list is people's names.
How the shuffle works
This is the provably fair shuffle: executed correctly, every one of the N! possible orderings of your list is equally likely. Naive shuffles (sorting by random keys in some programs, or swapping random pairs a few times) quietly favour certain positions, which is exactly what you do not want when position 1 wins a prize. Blank lines in your input are ignored and items are trimmed, so a list pasted from a spreadsheet or a document lands cleanly. Need numbers instead of names? The Random Number Generator draws integers in any range, with a no-duplicates mode for lottery-style picks.
Ideas beyond the raffle
Random order is a quiet problem-solver: randomise a practice playlist so you stop favouring the easy songs, order a backlog when everything claims priority, assign presentation slots without argument, shuffle flash-card order, or break a family dispute about whose turn it is. Fairness you can demonstrate beats fairness you merely assert — everyone watches the same list go in and the same shuffle come out.
Worked example
Shuffle Alice, Bob, Carol, David, Emma five ways and Emma lands on top about one time in five — exactly her fair share; every name is equally likely to be the first pick.
How to use this calculator
- Paste your list into the box, one item per line.
- Press Calculate (or Shuffle again) to randomise.
- Read the shuffled order in the table — position 1 is the first pick.
- Press again for a completely fresh shuffle.
Running a defensible giveaway
For a public draw, strengthen the process, not the maths: publish the entry list before shuffling, shuffle once on a shared screen or recording, and keep the result. The shuffle here is fair; what makes a giveaway trusted is that witnesses can see the list was fixed before the order was drawn. Picking between two names instead? The Love Calculator is the purely-for-fun way to let the letters decide.