About the project

For years, I have often thought “How often does that happen?” when watching Wheel. And although I’ve found various sites and message boards that do a great job at answering some of those questions, many simply required more detail than I had been able to find.

So I started tracking every spin, every vowel, every solve, every stubborn refusal to hop aboard the Express. (I still watch every episode purely as a fan, of course. But I now do a second watch where I input all this data into a spreadsheet, and even with the occasional pause, I can usually do this in the same 20-25 minutes it takes to watch an episode.) Then it’s just a matter of some data wrangling in R, after which I can dive into all sorts of interesting questions.

I started doing this about halfway through Season 42 (the 2024-2025 season, which was Ryan Seacrest’s first as Wheel host), coinciding with my own appearance on Wheel of Fortune that aired March 12, 2025. (Fans may remember the episode for Ryan Seacrest’s reveal of his [fake] tattoo LINK.)

About me

My name is Randy Bird, and as you’ve probably already guessed, I am a data nerd and a lifelong Wheel fan, watching since the days of the famed ceramic dalmatian and other shopping exploits. Watching contestants land on all those different wedges, $150 and $500 and $800 and the occasional shiny silver $5,000, and seeing their totals go up after they called a letter that was in the puzzle once, twice, or more, helped me learn basic arithmetic. (Calling vowels and seeing $250 subtracted from totals helped, too.)

I am originally from Chattanooga, Tenn., but I’ve lived in Pittsburgh, Pa., for the last 10 years.

In 2025, I accomplished a long-held goal of becoming a Wheel contestant, and I had a pretty good day.