Dennis;

So you'll know, I'm 66, a retired USGS seismologist/programmer.

I *DO* know what I'm talking about and the evaluation and probability is not subjective.

Your objections are valid to some degree though.

I use the largest mag. reported by NEIC (as do they). Magnitudes are not an educated guess; they are calculated from measured amplitudes on seismograms.

Near misses are for horeshoes and people wanting to look better than they really are. I have a program to locate the 3 best-fitting quakes but no one seemed interested.

If you make a prediction, I judge it by what you say and a quake either fits or doesn't. And your prediction has a measureable probability. Not subjective, as in
"I'm doing pretty good"

Roger