LW/RH:

Since the ring program encompasses multiple range rings which cover a large area of the earth, I think that before expanding it's capabilities that "proving it works" should be the first area to expand in / address.

In conjunction with the NEIC datbase that RH has donwloaded, I suggest that Roger consider splicing his eq. pred. evaluation program into the ring program in order to calculate the background seismicity in each ring and to write this information out to a data/text file.

It may be that so many quakes are happening (especially if the minimum FFA earthquake size triggered is down near mag. 1) and the area covered by the rings is so large that an illusion is possibly being created that this concept is sound and "working".

The program could probably be designed to divide each ring into a rectangular segments for doing NEIC quake searches. This could generate the background seismicity probabilities for each ring.

This will allow some insight as to whether or not the FFA range rings chosen are statistically significant or not. This will support the conclusion of either Fact or Illusion for this concept.

I think this would be a great and needed contribution by you Roger...should you wish to undertake such a task.

Perhaps putting a command line argument switch for turning on/off these calculations is the way to go....?

2cents (worth).