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jtsuken

Gambling should be a compulsory subject in primary school.

By the time they reach high school:

- Every kid should know how to play blackjack and poker.

- Every kid must know how to compute the odds of winning.

- Every kid should know how to verify the odds presented to them.

- Every kid should know at least three ways of cheating and being cheated

This might make the earth population a bit more resistant to panic and overreaction in times of uncertainty. Hopefully, fewer people will drink chlorine, stockpile toilet paper, participate in ponzi schemes, go to a real war against a fictitious enemy.

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They do, it's called probability and statistics.

Doesn't mean kids care. Or teachers, or parents.

> By the time they reach high school: Every kid should know [statistics]

Maybe things have changed. But when I was in highschool in America in the early 00s, statistics was an optional math class offered to juniors. Nobody had taken stats before reaching highschool, which is what the GP calls for, and kids in the "artistic track" weren't required to take stats at all.

Then top level comment is right, they should, that should change (assuming what you're saying is accurate).

Perhaps GP is not from the US. In the UK, statistics is not separate to mathematics, and is first met in primary school (even in three-school areas more analogue to the US) getting progressively more advanced up to and through (compulsorily until sixth form - the two years prior to university) 'high school'.

I'm a 90s kid and probability and statistics were like a one day throw away lesson.

I've unironically thought the same thing as the top post. Unless you're going into STEM you probably don't need more than the most basic conceptual understanding of calc or trig. But understanding how probabilities work is a huge benefit in every day life.

Then you'll just have people invent more smoke to hide the fact it's gambling. Trading card games are a good example. The game is, to a limit, one of skill, but you are gated by the cards you open in your scratch off ticke- I mean pack.

Plenty of people have fun playing trading card games by just making the best of the cards they get and, of course, trading. Most people I know who play or played them (including myself) were like that.

Of course, you can get obsessed with getting the best cards and end up wasting unhealthy amounts of money, but it's not the most common behavior. While I see the point that those games can be seen as having a gambling component, I don't think it's fair to group them together with pure gambling where there is no or almost no motivation to the game other than the possibility of winning a prize, like slot machines, roulette, or the game in this article.

Moderation. Moderation is key.

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