Can Earthquakes Be Predicted Algorithmically?

An anonymous reader with this story about a practical application of big data analysis as applied to the trove of sensor readings taken by satellites and by ground-based senosrs. A company called Terra Seismic says that earthquakes can be predicted 20-30 days before they occur, by sifting data for thermal, ionic, and other abnormalities in areas where quakes are considered likely. Says the linked article: "The company claims to have successfully predicted a number of earthquakes. For example, on 5th of April 2013, the firm issued a forecast for Japan. On 12th April 2013, an earthquake hit the identified area and 33 people were injured. On 4th June 2013, the firm again made a prediction for an earthquake in North Italy. On 21st June, an earthquake hit the identified area. On 3rd March 2013, the firm issued a forecast for an earthquake in Iran. Again, after 35 days, an earthquake hit the identified area."

Comments

Lists

[Anonymous Coward]

how about a list of times they predicted an earthquake and nothing happened.

without context its meaningless

Re:Lists

[stephanruby]

how about a list of times they predicted an earthquake and nothing happened.

without context its meaningless

That's incorrect. They do give you all the context you need.

They say they can predict earthquakes between 20 days and 30 days before they occur. For the Japanese earthquake, they failed. For the North Italy earthquake, they failed. And for the Iran earthquake they failed. Three out of three failures, even taking into account their standard error rate of plus or minus 5 days, I'd say those failure rates are pretty significant.

Those guys should go into the earthquake insurance and earthquake protection business. It's as if someone was paying actively attention to their predictions, and was actively making sure that no earthquake would ever occur during any of the 10-days windows they predicted. Please don't tell me that's just a coincidence. Nobody can be that unlucky. The entire stock market should just follow these guys, and bet against them consistently.

And what of false positives?

[wbr1]

How often do their algorithms generate a false positive? If that rate is sufficiently high, the system is useless.

Even if it were used, people would likely begin to ignore it.

Re:And what of false positives?

[NotInHere]

Both false positives and true negatives come with a cost. Calculate the probability with which a system is right, and you only have to do basic math to find out whether the prediction system gives you an economic or humanitarian advantage. As the humanitarian cost for false positives is very low compared to the economic one, it is very possible that there will be an unbalance between "most (economically or humanitarian) profitable strategies". Deciding between those can be I guess cause for some political debate.

Re:And what of false positives?

[jklovanc]

If the false positives are low enough people can make basic preparations.

Anyone in an earthquake zone should already have made basic preparations.

Sensitivity and Specificity

[ceoyoyo]

Sensitivity and specificity or it didn't happen.