So, how do you tell when and where an earthquake is going to occur given such a small amount of information?

I have developed these complex computer programs which attempt to link warning signal times with the times when past earthquakes occurred. The Wave Charts at my 90-03.html Web page represent one of those programs which is moderately easy to understand. However the main program that I use is turning out to be almost impossible to explain to people. I myself do not really know why it works. It was developed by using some basic logic and then making adjustments to the program operation until it began producing good numbers.

At the moment it does an excellent job of showing that some earthquake was responsible for a signal which was detected a few days or weeks in the past. But as valuable as that information is for research purposes it does not help too much with getting people out of the earthquake's way.

Where those routines are at the moment they appear to do a moderately good job of telling where an expected earthquake might occur perhaps 1/3 of the time. With a lot of work I can get them to do moderately well with another 1/3 of the expected earthquakes. With the last 1/3 they do not yet produce very good results.

To a large degree, the discussions which you are seeing regarding this technology are aimed at increasing the accuracy and effectiveness of these procedures. And I am also occasionally trying to post at least some information regarding an expected earthquake so that other people can watch the development process and hopefully generate some helpful comments.

At the same time I am trying to help other earthquake forecasters such as Shan get their own methods better organized so that people can determine if they do actually work, and what their strengths and limitations might be etc.