"This has all happened before. It will all happen again. This time, it happened to ..." J M Barrie.-- Peter Pan

Space/Science » in reply to Some geophysicist from UCLA claims there will be a 6.4 magnitude earthquake in Southern-California by September/05/2004.

David F Mayer — 5/10/2004 5:27:49 AM (archived)

Sorry, not nearly good enough.

First of all, it is necessary to predict when earthquakes will NOT happen as well, so that the success matrix can be constructed.

After all, I could predict an earthquake for every place on Earth, on every day in the future, and would have a 100% rate of successful predictions, that is to say, every earthquake that actually happened would have been predicted (number 3 and 4 would never occur).

There are 4 slots in the success matrix.

1 , 2
3 , 4

1. Predicted and happened
2. Predicted and failed to happen
3. Not predicted and happened
4. Not predicted and failed to happen

Numbers 1 & 2 above, without numbers 3 & 4 are completely meaningless.

I will believe in earthquake prediction after somebody gets a record where the sum of the percentages in numbers 1 & 4 above greatly exceed the sum of the percentages in 2 & 3 over a period of at least a decade and covering a large part of the Earth. This has never happened.
I am not holding my breath, either.

The whole thread (12 posts)

Some geophysicist from UCLA claims there will be a 6.4 magnitude earthquake in Southern-California by September/05/2004. - Jacob Samorodin - 4/27/2004 3:59:50 PM
- "This has all happened before. It will all happen again. This time, it happened to ..." J M Barrie.-- Peter Pan - David F Mayer - 5/10/2004 5:27:49 AM
- So far, a 4.4 - Tom Brosz - 5/10/2004 3:34:47 AM
- A similar prediction was made back in the early 90s about the New Madrid fault. - Lee - 4/28/2004 5:18:27 AM
  - New USGS Map Highlights Central U.S. Earthquake History - jms - 4/28/2004 5:24:05 PM
    - Thanks for the info. Here's some more. - Lee - 4/29/2004 5:21:56 AM
- That's a rather specific prediction - Larry J - 4/28/2004 12:20:44 AM
- re: Some geophysicist from UCLA claims there will be a 6.4 magnitude earthquake in Southern-California by September/05/2004. - Delbert - 4/27/2004 11:46:45 PM
- weaving threads together - jms - 4/27/2004 6:58:19 PM
  - A couple of things worth noting if you are a southern Californian. - Jacob Samorodin - 4/27/2004 8:05:26 PM
    - If their prediction method works, - alcaray - 4/27/2004 9:50:03 PM
- One would almost hope it happens. - Bowser - 4/27/2004 5:30:07 PM

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