Everyone that has responded brings up important points.

Actually, this sort of ties in with a discusison I'm having over on that other board, specifically the vagueness of predictions leaving too many ambiguities.

On one end of the spectrum we have people making predictions with such vague terms or phrases that there's arguement over just what was meant and whether the results are a hit or not. For example, the recent problem of "northern california" discussed on this board. I've seen even less specific predictions.

On the other end there's specifying exact time, places, distances, magnitudes, etc... Not unlike what I do with my Earthquake Dart Board. There is no room for doubt. In my scheme, if a distance is .01 too far, it's a miss. No arguing. But that's because I have clearly defined and stated the rules. I made great effort to eliminate all ambiguity. The advantage of this is it eliminates all doubt and makes evaluations easy. No guess work, no reading minds, no arguing.

Going back to the other end of the spectrum, all that happens is endless argument.

Predictions NEED to be closer to what I do. There needs to more precision in what's stated. This permits an evaluation of the probability of the quakes success.

If things are too vague, it's not possible to evaluate and any discussion reduces to a shouting match of he said/she said - which makes both the prediction and the evaluation useless.

I agree that it's kind of silly to call a quake that's over the top a miss. But the prediction WAS specific. In the end I think it's best to leave the top end out of it, unless you say something like "I predict a quake of magnitude 1.0 or above..."

Perhaps when Roger get's back I'll talk to him about the possibility of doing evaluations with fuzzy boundaries. I can see in my mind one way to do it, but even then, there are still clearly defined rules.

Hmmm...clearly defined rules. That seems to be the crux of the matter. No one clearly defines what they'd consider a hit or miss - AHEAD of time. Too much guessing. Too much arguing. Too much wasted time.

Brian