The 1–50 range
Fifty is a raffle book, a list of US states, a fifty-question paper, a corridor of fifty rooms. It is also where percentages become easy again: one in fifty is 2 percent, no decimals required.
Each number gets that 2 percent whether or not it looks like a plausible answer. Fifty itself comes up as often as 23.
For up to ten numbers in one pass, raise the count and they arrive sorted and without duplicates.
- 1 to 50, both included
- 50 whole numbers
- 2%, exactly 1 in 50
- 1 to 10 numbers per draw
- None inside a multi-number draw
- Every draw gets a link that replays it
What a 1–50 draw is for
- Drawing a winner from a fifty-ticket raffle book
- Picking one of the fifty US states from a numbered list
- Choosing a question from a fifty-item bank
- Assigning fifty rooms, lockers or seats
- Sampling 2 percent of a batch for a quality check
How the randomness works
Every tap calls crypto.getRandomValues, the browser's cryptographic generator, and asks it for one unsigned 32-bit value. That lands somewhere between 0 and 4,294,967,295, and it then has to be folded down to the 50 numbers in this range.
Folding it down with a plain remainder is where most generators go wrong, an error known as modulo bias. 50 does not divide 4,294,967,296 evenly: 46 values are left over at the top, and wrapping them around would make the first 46 numbers in the range fractionally likelier than the rest. This tool throws away any raw value at or above the last exact multiple of 50 and draws a fresh one instead. That is rejection sampling. It fires about 1 in 93,368,854 draws, and it is the difference between 2% exactly and 2% approximately.
Ask for more than one number and the tool keeps drawing until it holds that many distinct values, then sorts them ascending. Nothing is seeded, nothing is sent anywhere, and each draw is independent of the one before it. The roll history under the tool lives in your browser's local storage, where the clear button empties it. The daily lucky numbers elsewhere on this site work the opposite way on purpose: they use a seeded generator so the same date always returns the same set. How random is random sets the two side by side.
Two percent each, exactly, which makes 1–50 a good range for sanity-checking the tool yourself. Tap fifty times and you should see roughly 32 different numbers and 18 repeats, not fifty different ones. People running raffles often mistake that clustering for a broken generator and start redrawing until the spread looks right, which is the one action that genuinely introduces bias.
- crypto.getRandomValues, the browser's cryptographic generator
- One unsigned 32-bit value, sometimes more
- Rejection sampling onto 50 slots
- 46 of 4,294,967,296 raw values, redrawn
- No. These tools are never seeded
- Your browser. No server ever sees a draw
1–50 — frequently asked
Tap Generate with the range as it stands. Each number takes a fiftieth of the probability, and the result is drawn on your device.
Number the tickets in an order you can show afterwards, publish that order before you draw, then draw once. Copy the result link and post it alongside the list. The link replays the same numbers, so the draw stops being something people have to take on trust.
Because each tap ignores the last one. Fifty independent draws land on about 32 distinct numbers, leaving 18 slots taken up by duplicates. A run of fifty with no repeats at all would be evidence of a rigged generator, not a fair one.