As racing and sport prepare for the new rules there are fears that the punters themselves will be ignored
![Talking Horses: new Gambling Act in danger of miscalculating the stakes](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/950ea2ca2a647fa16bcd81454b0cf31f633ab431/0_296_5700_3418/master/5700.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&enable=upscale&s=25e7504d1f3efe9839c8c42a81ebac8b)
The Royal Statistical Society published the results of an interesting survey of MPs last week, having asked 101 of the people who make our laws a fairly basic question about probability: if you toss the same coin twice, what are the chances that it will be heads both times? Forty-eight per cent of them got it wrong.
To be fair to our current crop of MPs, that was an improvement on the result when the society conducted a similar survey a decade ago and 40% got it right. The performance of
Labour MPs has definitely improved, from 23% getting it right 10 years ago to 53% – 1% in front of the Tories – this time around. But even so, the results reflect quite poorly on the basic numeracy of our elected representatives.