If you need a fair answer right now, use the online wheel. If you want a rainy-day craft, make the homemade one. Here’s why, and how to build a fair one if you do.
Fair is harder than it looks
A yes or no spinner only has one job: give YES and NO the same chance. That means the two halves of the circle have to be exactly equal.
They rarely are. Cut YES a little wide, say 190 degrees of the circle instead of 180, and it lands about 53% of the time. You’d never see that by eye, and you’d never notice it in a few spins.
The pointer matters too. A paperclip spinning around a pencil tip can catch on the paper and stop short, and a slightly bent clip can favor one side.
Our yes or no wheel doesn’t have those problems. Its code draws eight slices of exactly 45 degrees each, and your browser picks where it stops. We ran its math a million times and YES came up 50.03% of the time.
What the online wheel does better
It’s already in your pocket. There’s nothing to build or fix.
It’s the same wheel every time. Code doesn’t tear or bend the way paper and paperclips do.
It comes in more than one flavor. When “not yet” is a real answer, try the Yes, No or Maybe Wheel. When you’re stuck on whether to start something, try Should I Do It?
What the homemade spinner does better
Making it is the fun part. Dividing a circle into equal slices is a real geometry lesson hiding in a craft project.
It works without a screen or Wi-Fi.
And you can write anything you want on it. Our wheels have fixed answers, so if you want “pizza” and “tacos” on the slices, a homemade spinner is the way to go.
How to make a fair one at home
- Trace a dinner plate on cardstock and cut out the circle.
- Fold it in half, then in half again. The creases give you four equal slices, and a third fold gives you eight.
- Color the slices YES and NO, alternating all the way around.
- Push a pencil tip through a paperclip at the very center and hold the pencil straight up.
- Flick the paperclip hard enough that it goes around at least three times.
Then test it. Spin 20 times and keep a tally. If one answer wins 15 or more of the 20, check your slices and your center point. With a fair spinner, that happens only about 4 times in 100.
So which one should you use?
Use the online wheel when you want the answer to be fair and you want it fast. Make the homemade spinner when the making is the point.
When the question can’t wait while you hunt for a paperclip, your phone is right there.