Rhodes publishes Open Letter concerning misuse of Gambling Statistics

[News Hound]

Andrew Rhodes the Chief Executive of the Gambling Commission publishes an open letter concerning the misuse of gambling statistics

Read the full article here: Rhodes publishes Open Letter concerning misuse of Gambling Statistics

 

[bamberfishcake]

Interesting stuff. Will have a good read of the letter, but before I delve deeper, the only significant misuse of statistics that screams foul-play are the different RTP versions of the same titles.

No other product like it in the world, and it's nothing short of a con.

 

[sirusthevirus]

Andrew Rhodes the Chief Executive of the Gambling Commission publishes an open letter concerning the misuse of gambling statistics

Read the full article here: Rhodes publishes Open Letter concerning misuse of Gambling Statistics

WOW this is alarming, if not entirely surprising. Thanks for posting.

 

[bamberfishcake]

My own interpretation is that the letter is designed to shut up opinions backed up by statistics and to declare that the number of problem gamblers is greater than some interpret.

Is the message that there is a bigger problem than many believe? Seems like a funny letter to produce. The saying 'Lies, damned lies, and statistics' springs to mind.

If there is an issue with the interpretation of statistics, perhaps better education or some clarification of them would be useful.

If key players in the industry have a misunderstanding of the 'facts', how can the problem be tackled with so little understanding? Perhaps this is a prerequisite to a potential legal battle, or maybe Andrew Rhodes has way too much time on his hands.

In any case, its a bit of a nothing letter to me, with a lot of finger-pointing at best, and with no proposed clarification to the suggested confusion.

 

[Pl4yrs]

I think every public party use statistics in their own meanings. If they want to prohibit something they say "oh study say its so bad.."

 

[Webzcas]

I think the reasoning behind publishing this letter is as a direct result of the newly formed group The Gamblers Consumer Forum using stats to empower their own position. Read about this here: Questions raised concerning the Gamblers Consumer Forum

 

[jasonuk]

I think the reasoning behind publishing this letter is as a direct result of the newly formed group The Gamblers Consumer Forum using stats to empower their own position. Read about this here: Questions raised concerning the Gamblers Consumer Forum

Agreed, and even from their first three statements there are a lot of double standards going on.

As a lobbying group focused on dialling back legislation, I can understand why they're upset with some of the potentially loose (as in definitions could have been cleaner) statements made by Will Prochaska of the charity Gambling With Lives, but similarly their own analysis doesn't then stand up to scrutiny.

For example, their headline "99.6% of British adults gamble without an issue" requires that

• you exclude adults that don't gamble - their uncited "health surveys" quote 0.22-0.26% of all adults, then 0.4-0.5% for adult gamblers (the original version of the headline actually used 99.8%, but was changed)
• you apply an absurd standard where "without an issue" is anything short of clinical diagnosis of a gambling disorder, which they do frequently throughout the website (and most of their objections relate to precise language about "at risk gamblers", "problem gamblers", "gambling disorder" and "gambling addiction")

If they had said 0.4% of adults have a clinically-diagnosed gambling disorder - that's fine with a cited reliable source, but that doesn't help their narrative because they want that to be considered the final number, not including all of the other tiers of problem gambling (which as the UKGC cites from the HSE 2018 survey, reaches 8.5% of participants for slots, casino and bingo).

If the UKGC were trying to quell genuine debate I would agree that it was an overreach, but in this case I think it's fair to call out dangerously misleading statistics.