Hi All:

Having the following type of program available for anybody to use (in their own homes privately) will be another step in allowing all parties to judge for themselves whether or not they are truly making a difference or just wasting time (though identifying unsuccessful methods is educational for the late/new-comers):

------------------------------------------------
EARTHQUAKE PREDICTION EVALUATION
PROGRAM PSEUDO-FLOW:

1. Read in proper eq. prediction: mag. range, date range, location range (anything less is "playing in the sands box"...)
2. Evaluate the probability of the prediciton compared to random chance (using the largest observed data available).
- Multiple methods may be employed and accumulated to answer some of the skeptics responses. Perhaps use a selection menu or just execute all methods (accessing a database of quakes like NEIC from 1973 onward).
3. Evaluate the miss "nearness to a hit". Accumulate the statistics on this. This provides a measure of nearness to a hit which identifies the odds of doing so. This could help identify a successful method which is otherwise showing a "low hit rate".
4. Accumulate the statistics for the following metrics:
A) Hit rate and average or accumulated odds of achieving said rate
B) For misses, nearness of misses by accumulating (or averaging) the odds of the best fit quake (still a miss) but which is nearest to the hit.
(Note: A worthless method (judged by hit rate alone) would reveal a specific average odds for "nearest best match" whereas a successful method (not otherwise revealed by hit rate) should show a much lower odds for "nearest best match".
==> Without this section a good method may be prematurely discarded.
5. Output the results in plain english which any average user could understand. Include a dictionary and explanation of terms if needed. Also include references and other examples so that the user will fully appreciate what the results indicate.
--------------------------------------------------

Having this program available (on CD perhaps) will allow folks who think they maybe onto something to evaluate themselves (& privately too if so desired).

In this way, folks making claims of advances will have an easy way to see if they are making a true advance Or are just chasing an illusion and are therefore wasrting their time (which may be used more productively in perhaps other aspects).

I believe the widespread availability of this type of a program will cut down on a lot of the perhaps well-intentioned but nevertheless "wishful" claims of "advances" in this area.

Any takers out there for the development of such a program? I know Roger has lots of the pieces to this puzzle but wouldn't want to overwhelm him with more "work" (more or less). Perhaps George may wish to take the pieces of Roger's work and form a Perl version of this program?

Just some thoughts,

& my $.02 worth