Yes or No Wheel

The Yes or No Wheel settles a stuck decision in one click. Set how much of the wheel Yes, No and Maybe each deserve, spin, and the wheel draws one answer with exactly the odds you asked for. Slide Maybe down to zero and you have a clean yes-or-no wheel; fill the custom box and you have a wheel of your own options instead. Unlike a novelty spinner, every result comes with the odds each slice had, the random number the spin actually drew, and a gut-check step that turns your reaction into the real decision.

What Makes This Wheel Different

Most yes-no wheels are one feature deep: equal slices, an animation, a word. Three things here are not:

How a Weighted Wheel Is Built

Each option carries a weight. Its share of the wheel is its weight divided by the total of all weights, and its arc is that share times 360 degrees.

The spin then draws one uniform random number between 0 and 1 and finds the slice whose cumulative range contains it. With the wheel above, a draw of 0.412 lands in Yes (0.000000 – 0.600000), a draw of 0.735 lands in No (0.600000 – 0.800000), and a draw of 0.900 lands in Maybe. That is the entire algorithm, deliberately, because a method you can check by hand is worth more here than a clever one you cannot.

Common Wheel Setups

The last row is worth trying deliberately. Give the answer you are afraid of a 10% slice and spin. If the 10% comes up and you feel a jolt of excitement rather than dread, you have learned something no amount of further thinking would have told you.

Custom Option Wheels

The custom box accepts up to eight of your own options as a comma separated list. A number after a colon sets that option's weight; anything without a number gets a weight of 1.

Custom options override the sliders, so clear the box to go back to Yes/No/Maybe. Labels are capped at 24 characters so they still fit on a slice, duplicates are dropped, and an option weighted 0 is removed from the wheel entirely.

Why Randomizing a Decision Actually Works

Handing a decision to a wheel sounds irresponsible, and for high-stakes, reversible-at-great-cost choices it is. For the enormous class of decisions where the two options are close in value, it is the fastest correct move available, for three reasons.

1. If the options were far apart you would not be stuck. Being genuinely torn is evidence that the expected values are close, which means the cost of picking the "wrong" one is small — and much smaller than the cost of another week of deliberation.
2. Deliberation past a point makes decisions worse, not better. Extra thinking mostly generates new justifications for whichever option you were already leaning toward, dressed up as new information.
3. A random answer exposes your preference. This is the mechanism behind the old advice to flip a coin and notice how you feel while it is in the air. You cannot introspect a preference reliably, but you can observe your reaction to a concrete answer. That is what the gut check formalises.

So the honest instruction for this tool is: spin, read the answer, and pay attention to the half-second before you start reasoning. If you are relieved, act. If you are disappointed, do the opposite. If you feel nothing, the wheel was right by default.

Reading the Indecision Meter

The meter is the normalized Shannon entropy of your slice shares, expressed as 0 to 100 percent. Entropy measures how spread out a probability distribution is; dividing by its maximum for that number of slices puts every wheel on the same scale regardless of how many options it has.

Why the Same Link Always Gives the Same Answer

Every spin is tied to a seed number carried in the page address. Reloading, bookmarking or sharing that link reproduces the identical spin. This is deliberate rather than a limitation:

• The answer cannot quietly change under you while you are thinking about it, which would let you re-roll unconsciously until you liked the result.
• You can send someone the exact spin you got, and they see the same wheel, the same random number and the same winner.
• The published draw is a real check rather than decoration, since anyone can reload the link and confirm the number.

Press Spin again for a fresh result — it loads the same wheel with a new seed. And if you find yourself pressing it five times in a row, that is itself the answer: you clearly want one specific outcome, so go and do that.

Good and Bad Uses

Frequently Asked Questions

How does a weighted decision wheel work?
Each option gets a weight, and the wheel gives it a share of the circle equal to its weight divided by the total of all weights. With Yes at 3, No at 1 and Maybe at 1, the total is 5, so Yes owns three fifths of the wheel, or 60 percent and 216 degrees of arc, while No and Maybe own 20 percent and 72 degrees each. The spin then draws one uniform random number between 0 and 1 and picks whichever slice that number lands in, so an option with 60 percent of the wheel wins about 60 spins in every 100.

Is the spin actually random or is it rigged?
It is a uniform random draw, and the page publishes enough information for you to check it rather than trust it. Every result shows the random number the spin drew, to six decimal places, plus the cumulative range each slice occupies. The winning slice is simply the one whose range contains that number, which you can verify by hand in a few seconds. Most wheel sites show you an animation and nothing else, so there is no way to tell a fair draw from a weighted one.

Why do I get the same answer when I reload the page?
Every spin is tied to a seed number in the page address, so reloading or sharing that link always reproduces the same spin. That is deliberate. It stops the answer quietly changing under you while you think about it, it lets you send someone the exact spin you got, and it is what makes the published random number a real proof rather than a decoration. Click Spin Again for a new result, which loads the same wheel with a fresh seed.

How do I make a yes or no wheel without Maybe?
Drag the Maybe slider all the way down to 0. A slice with weight 0 is removed from the wheel entirely, leaving a clean two-slice yes or no spinner. The same trick works in reverse: set Yes and No to 1 each and Maybe to 2 if you want deferring the decision to be the most likely outcome.

What does the indecision meter measure?
It is the normalized Shannon entropy of your slice shares, shown as 0 to 100 percent. If every slice is the same size the meter reads 100 percent, meaning your wheel expresses no preference at all and you have handed the whole decision to chance. If one slice dominates, the meter falls toward 0 percent, which usually means you already know the answer and are looking for permission rather than a decision. It is a read on your own weights, not on the spin.

Should I actually do what the wheel says?
Not necessarily, and that is the point of the gut check. A random answer is useful mainly because your reaction to it is honest in a way that further deliberation is not. If the result makes you feel relieved, you wanted it and should act on it. If it makes you feel disappointed, you wanted the other option and should do that instead. If you feel nothing either way, the decision genuinely does not matter enough to keep spending attention on, so take the wheel at its word and move on.

Can I use it for more than yes, no and maybe?
Yes. The custom options box accepts up to 8 of your own choices as a comma separated list, with an optional weight after a colon, for example Pizza:3, Sushi:2, Ramen:1. Options without a number get a weight of 1, so a plain list such as Gym, Run, Rest day gives an equal three-way wheel. Everything else works the same: the odds table, the fairness proof, the indecision meter and the shareable link all apply to custom wheels too.