A commenter recommended the book, Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas, by the anthropologist Natasha Dow Schüll, and I checked it out of the library. It’s a study of people who play slot machines and video poker, focusing on the locals: Vegas residents who have some low-level gambling addictions as part of their lives. Nowadays, I guess that much of this business has been supplanted by machine gambling that you can do on your phone in the comfort of your own home. But the market for gambling must be far from being tapped: I imagine that there are many millions of potential gambling addicts out there, available to be hooked by some form of gambling or another. As a statistician, I have mixed feelings about gambling. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve thought that probability is cool, and I like to bet. When we were kids we had a toy roulette set that we would play (just betting chips, not real money) and I’ve enjoyed poker and informal sports betting. The last time I’ve bet on…
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