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It must be great to be a consultant. People pay you well and then listen to what you say – what’s not to like? Well, for one thing, eventually you have to write a report. It has to be long, so the customer feels he’s getting his money’s worth, and it has to be detailed.

You have to convert guesswork into decimal places.

If you haven’t had a chance to read the 188-page report that so excited would-be Prairie Meadows South casino owners, let’s take a glance.

The Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission hired The Innovation Group to conduct the study. Innovation is a New Orleans-based company that provides “consulting services for the gaming, leisure and hospitality industries,” according to its Web site.

“The Innovation Group of Companies’ broad range of expertise and experience covers almost every aspect of the casino/resort economic development process: The Innovation Group to consult, Innovation Capital to finance and advise, Innovation Project Development to coordinate build-out, Innovation Marketing to position and Innovation Management Services to operate.”

Asking these guys whether you should build another casino is like asking a hot dog vendor whether you should buy another hot dog.

The goal was to “identify underserved and/or underperforming markets in Iowa, and thus uncover any material latent gaming demand,” according to the report. The researchers were instructed to focus on five counties: Franklin, Lyon, Tama, Wapello and Webster.

But just for the heck of it, Innovation “endeavored to examine all the markets in Iowa in search of underserved and/or underperforming markets.”

This extra effort led the researchers to notice that folks on the west side of Greater Des Moines were walking around aimlessly in the evenings, jingling the change in their pockets and wishing Altoona and Osceola weren’t so far away.

Innovation punched in the numbers, applied a few algorithms or equations or something along those lines, and decided that the local market is leaving $100 million to $160 million lying on the ground every year, unscooped-up.

How do you calculate a thing like this?

For one example, start with 26,170 vehicles using Interstate 35 daily on the southwest side of town. Then estimate that 35 percent of them contain people who are passing through the area, not living or working here. Then estimate 1.3 adults per vehicle. Then estimate that 1.7 percent of the vehicles will pull off the highway to visit the casino. Then estimate the “win per visit” – also known as a “loss” if you’re the one making the bets – at $43.

Voila – now you know that a new casino will make $3,177,078 from the transient trade.

Similarly, we’re told that a high-end facility would capture 37.3 percent of the local market or about 1.87 million “gamer visits.”

Well, maybe. And yet it’s almost impossible to predict enough college football scores to win an office pool.

Despite all of the time spent on math, it seems unlikely that Iowa’s gambling regulators will add another casino here. The Prairie Meadows board said “no thanks” last week.

It also seems doubtful that we need more gambling here. It has been suggested that our only choices are to add gambling or raise taxes, but there must be other ways we could scrape up cash.

Software development, food processing, marionette shows … there has to be something.

Researchers tell us that the human brain is wired to take more pleasure in seeking than in finding. Apply this to gambling, and it explains why winning a jackpot never provides enough satisfaction. Instead, it’s back to the machine or the table to start the next exciting quest.

You don’t suppose this also describes the never-ending pleas for “one more casino,” do you?