Small sample size theater

When you're evaluating a baseball player, you always approach with caution even the best statistics compiled for only 50 at bats or so. Why? Because everybody knows that baseball is the game where you have 600 or 700 at-bats in a year and 50 at bats is not enough to make a judgment of how a batter will perform over an entire season.

The technical term for this is sample size error. What it means is that you don't have enough information to make a well-informed decision. With that in mind, let me tell you all about Tucson, Arizona.

Tucson looks at first glance to be in the desert but actually it rains here almost constantly. I went for a hike yesterday and I have to take my shoes off four times across little rivers (they called them "washes," that's a laugh- I got all muddy). There also signs everywhere that say Do Not Enter If Flooded. This is such good advice that I'm resolved to follow it in all circumstances, but I've never seen them anywhere else so it must flood here a lot. So why are there so many cacti around? I don't understand. It's also really cold the temperature doesn't seem to get much above 50 and it goes down into the upper 20s at night.

They also have signs everywhere saying high fire danger but I don't understand how that can be when it's raining all the time. In fact, I've not seen anything or anyone on fire since I've been here.

It's also dark almost all the time here. The sun doesn't rise until after 8 o'clock in the morning. Then it's just dark because of the cloud cover. I guess this explains why it's deserted. There are almost no people here. The hotel where I'm staying looks like it has room for 1000 people or so and yet I seem to be the only person there except for the staff.

They make all the buildings here the same color as the landscape so that you can't find them. "Where is that place?" "Make a right after the blow-slung brownish building that looks like every other building within 100 square miles." Thank God for brightly colored plastic signs or I never would have found anything.

In sum, based on my experience Tucson is nothing like what they say it is.