EquaTalk Timer

A way to fairly divide talking time

EquaTalk is a method of fairly dividing talking time in a group discussion, originally invented by Robin Hanson in 1995.

EquaTalk requires a timer programmed to have a 1/60 chance to beep every second.

Start off by distributing a number of tokens equal to the number of minutes the group will meet; ten people meeting for two hours would get twelve tokens each. Then the basic rule is that if you are talking when the timer beeps, you must discard one token, say by tossing it into a central pile. When you run out of tokens, you must stay quiet or convince someone else to give a token.

If there is a beep while two people are talking at once, they should both discard a token. If there is a beep when no one is taking, no one should discard. Borderline cases have to be decided by the group.

With this app, you set the duration of the meeting and how many people are participating and it will calculate how many tokens each person receives.

Once the timer is running, each second, it generates a random number between 1 and 60 and if it generates the number 60 it will beep.

You can read the original write up of EquaTalk by Rob Hanson by visiting http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/equatalk.html