Roger,

The references I was making in regard to Jim Berkland were his specific earthquake predictions, not his monthly round-up. I probably could be corrected on this, but I do believe he has issued at least 6 correct predictions, which were site specific and were published in newspapers in advance of the earthquakes. All of them fell within his window, magnitude range and location. And of course Loma Prieta is within that group.

One of the issues which seemed to be a problem for some scientists in regard to Geo-Forecasters was their rating method for hits and misses. But on the horizon we have Tom Jordan with his new Earthquake Collaborary where he says, "you tell us what your program is and what YOU consider a hit." So in essence if Geo-Forecasters were submitting to Jordan's program, he wouldn't care what they presented as long as the earthquakes arrived and fit their acceptable criteria.

In my particular case it was not until near the end of last year when I realized that I was shooting myself in the foot by trying to affix an upper-end magnitude and finding that if I missed by .1 the prediction was considered a failure. Therefore, in order to fit into your program the only way it would work is not to set an upper end magnitude.

That's really not a good thing because if you start at say 3.0 and affix no upper end magnitude, then you would be saying the quake could be between a 3.0 and a 9.0, which is obviously misleading. Thus if I adjusted my own program, perhaps I would have to add 2.0 on top of the low end magnitude and hope that might work. It is a challenge for sure.

Perhaps it is like grading on a curve or putting round, where only square existed previously.

Petra