Dennis, thanks for your reply. I am afraid I am a bit rusty on this. I haven't evaluated one of your predictions for about 3 years and I had to go back to my notes. In any case, I have updated the probability of you having success by chance. The probability of at least one earthquake in your three regions (disregarding aftershocks) is 4.8% 8.8% and 20.6% for a total probability of 31.1%. (You add two probabilities as prob(A+B) = prob(A) + prob(B) - prob(AB)). The probability of an aftershock in your three regions is 0.0% (region one does not extend to the fault zone), 99.6%, and 94.6%

And, yes you are right that there has only been one event in your prediction zones, the 1999/10/19 12:20:44 mag 4.6. Sorry about that, I was working too fast and not being careful.

You said that Roger and I keep forgetting that the quake could have been somewhere else. What does this mean? The quake was within your two outer regions and the fact remains that the 4.6 event was an aftershock of the Hector Mines event. Roger and I were just saying that there was a very high probability of your prediction being fullfilled by a Hector Mines aftershock and it apparently has been. You claim a hit which I agree with. My point is that a hit for a prediction that has a 99.9% chance of being fullfilled by chance can hardly be counted as meaning much. As in the discussions we've had before, a prediction MUST be evaluated against the events happening by chance. In order for the predictor to show "skill" he/she must he/she can do better than chance as some probability level.

You asked the question of what the odds are that there hasn't been a magnitude 5.0 event in your time window. It is not good statistical practice to compute the probability of an event (or non event in this case) after the fact. That is like dealing a poker hand of say, 4H, 9C, QC, KH, AD and then computing the probability of getting this exact hand. It is very small but doesn't mean anything. However, with the probability of there NOT being a 5.0 or larger event in the time since your prediction window started is about 45%. So, roughly, 50-50. The probability of a 5.0 or greater in your 5-day windows is about 72%. So, let's wait and see.