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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and six (unpublished dice rolls conducted by the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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