This follows from threads below-Roger made FFA ring maps for the 10 days before, and the 10 days after, 3 of the largest earthquakes from 2001-I think these are the India EQ, the Kunlun EQ, and one in South America. I assume the idea for FFAs comes from Lowell (someone may want to link to earlier discussions of these). Hopefully these maps will be posted when Canie gets back. In my opinion, there is no clear correlation between earthquakes after a major quake with the rings, compared to the 10 days before. But, that said, there still may be something going on. First, perhaps there is something going on where sites on the FFA rings become active before the major quake, as Lowell has suggested for intraplate quakes in the continental US (not on FFA rings, but on small circles?). And, there are some suggestive things in these 3 "after" plots: in one, the South America subduction zone lights up and it is running parallel to and on top of a ring. In another, there is a M>5 very close to the antipode. And, we had noticed at the time that the M6.4 (?) EQ at Ascenscion Island was on the 103 deg ring right after Kunlun. But, there was a M>5 on the same ring, on the Mid Atlantic Ridge, in the 10 days before Kunlun.

So, here is what I suggest, if Roger is into it:
Make the earthquakes color coded for how many days after the earthquake. Try plots for 5 days rather than 10. Make the size of the symbols change for each Magnitude number, rather than just showing what is larger than or smaller than M5. Do plots for as many earthquakes as you feel like doing-but do the largest ones first. Don't include any earthquakes below a low magnitude cutoff-that cutoff should be where the global catalogue starts to become significantly incomplete (I'd cut it off at M4.0).

While comments to Roger on statistics were good ones, I don't think a statistical correlation will be convincing unless the maps show something. You would need both to publish.

So, what to do if there are a relatively few triggered earthquakes, but not clear global pattern?
Chris