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Many books encourage the search for biases. The hallmark of this type of
material is that the reader does not need to
know why a bias occurred, only how to measure it
and track it. Most of the materials that discuss
biases do not even address the issue of
distinguishing chance from bias. Biased systems
are somewhat more difficult to evaluate than
other erroneous beliefs because real world
biases do exist that make games somewhat
predictable. A weighted dice is an example of a
real world bias. In fact, unless care is taken
to ensure that the dice are perfectly square and
balanced, they will show a bias. Dice used in
home board games, such as Snakes and Ladders,
often have a bias towards the numbers five and
six because the numbers are marked on the dice
using holes. The side with one hole is heavier
than the other sides, and the side with six
holes is the lightest side. After 1,000 rolls of
an ordinary board game dice, there is a 2% bias
in favour of the five and six (unpublished dice
rolls conducted by the first and third authors).
However, casino dice, roulette wheels and
lottery balls are carefully manufactured to
ensure that they do not have a bias, and are
tested or maintained to ensure no bias occurs.
Nonetheless, biases in many games are possible,
so a system that encourages the search for a
bias cannot automatically be dismissed as
misinformation. However, few of the bias books
bring up the issue of finding an apparent bias
by pure chance (a type 1 error).
Evaluation of the overall quality of each book
After determining the general nature of the
information contained in the books and other
material, we went through the notes for each
book to determine which type of information or
misinformation was found in each book. In
addition, we coded this material in terms of its
overall impact and have determined a rough
(quantitative) estimate of the overall quality
of the book which we rated using a school-type
grading system ranging from excellent "A" to
very poor "F." These grades do not reflect
whether or not the book tries to prevent problem
gambling in any way, only how accurately it
discusses gambling. The categories and overall
grade score are given in Table 1. Note that
these reviews are not exhaustive. It is possible
that specific items mentioned might have
additional strengths or weaknesses not discussed
here.
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