Random animal generator wheel

How to spin the wheel of animals

1. Select Spin the wheel.
2. Read the animal under the pointer to the class.
3. Spin again for the next child.
4. Narrow Group to one of the six for a wheel of birds, fish or mammals only.
5. Use Segments to put 6, 8, 12 or 16 animals on the wheel at once.
6. Select Reset to put every animal back.

Three reels instead of one wheel

Select Slots and the same draw comes up on three reels at once. The three are always different from each other and from anything already drawn.

Three at a time suits a few jobs the wheel does not: one animal each for a table of three, a team for charades, or three animals a class has to get into one story. The reels are a different way of showing the draw, not a different draw.

How the wheel picks

The winner is chosen before the wheel moves. The same draw the rest of the site uses picks one of the animals on the wheel, and the wheel is then turned so that one lands under the pointer.

That order matters. Spinning by a random amount and reading off wherever it stopped would hand the result to an easing curve and the browser’s frame timing, and we could not tell you what the odds were. This way the animation is presentation, and the odds are the plain ones: every animal on the wheel is equally likely.

The animals on the wheel are themselves drawn from the 449 in the catalog, minus anything already spun. So the wheel shows a handful at a time and the catalog behind it is the whole thing. The methodology covers the draw and the catalog’s limits.