Re: Anyone know if Alvaro is OK?

There was a huge earthquake in Chile this morning ... Alvaro, you OK?

--Josh Berkus

Josh Berkus wrote:
> There was a huge earthquake in Chile this morning ... Alvaro, you OK?

Yes, I talked to Alvaro via IM about 2 hours ago. He was already
online. His apartment building was shaken up but undamaged and his
family is fine too.

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> http://momjian.us
EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com

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Is there a higher then normal amount of earthquakes happening recently?
haiti, japan just had one for 6.9, there was apparently one in illinos a
few weeks back, one on the Russia/China/N.Korean border and now Chile?

Hrmmm ...

On Sat, 27 Feb 2010, Bruce Momjian wrote:

> Josh Berkus wrote:
>> There was a huge earthquake in Chile this morning ... Alvaro, you OK?
>
> Yes, I talked to Alvaro via IM about 2 hours ago. He was already
> online. His apartment building was shaken up but undamaged and his
> family is fine too.
>
> --
> Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> http://momjian.us
> EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com
>
> PG East: http://www.enterprisedb.com/community/nav-pg-east-2010.do
>
> --
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----
Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Hosting Solutions S.A.
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Yahoo:yscrappy Skype: hub.org ICQ:7615664 MSN:scrappy(at)hub(dot)org

On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 7:21 PM, Marc G. Fournier <scrappy(at)hub(dot)org> wrote:
> Is there a higher then normal amount of earthquakes happening recently?
> haiti, japan just had one for 6.9, there was apparently one in illinos a few
> weeks back, one on the Russia/China/N.Korean border and now Chile?
>
> Hrmmm ...

Should I rocket my children to a solar system with a yellow sun?

...Robert

On Feb 27, 2010, at 20:33 , Robert Haas wrote:

> On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 7:21 PM, Marc G. Fournier <scrappy(at)hub(dot)org>
> wrote:
>> Is there a higher then normal amount of earthquakes happening
>> recently?
>> haiti, japan just had one for 6.9, there was apparently one in
>> illinos a few
>> weeks back, one on the Russia/China/N.Korean border and now Chile?
>>
>> Hrmmm ...
>
> Should I rocket my children to a solar system with a yellow sun?
>
> ...Robert

Isn't that Rob-el?

Michael Glaesemann
grzm seespotcode net

It must be that someone has dropped a small amount of
cheese into a lactose-intolerant volcano god...

Marc G. Fournier írta:
>
> Is there a higher then normal amount of earthquakes happening
> recently? haiti, japan just had one for 6.9, there was apparently one
> in illinos a few weeks back, one on the Russia/China/N.Korean border
> and now Chile?
>
> Hrmmm ...
>
> On Sat, 27 Feb 2010, Bruce Momjian wrote:
>
>> Josh Berkus wrote:
>>> There was a huge earthquake in Chile this morning ... Alvaro, you OK?
>>
>> Yes, I talked to Alvaro via IM about 2 hours ago. He was already
>> online. His apartment building was shaken up but undamaged and his
>> family is fine too.
>>
>> --
>> Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> http://momjian.us
>> EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com
>>
>> PG East: http://www.enterprisedb.com/community/nav-pg-east-2010.do
>>
>> --
>> Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org)
>> To make changes to your subscription:
>> http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers
>>
>
> ----
> Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Hosting Solutions S.A.
> scrappy(at)hub(dot)org http://www.hub.org
>
> Yahoo:yscrappy Skype: hub.org ICQ:7615664 MSN:scrappy(at)hub(dot)org
>

--
Bible has answers for everything. Proof:
"But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more
than these cometh of evil." (Matthew 5:37) - basics of digital technology.
"May your kingdom come" - superficial description of plate tectonics

----------------------------------
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Cybertec Schönig & Schönig GmbH
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Marc G. Fournier wrote:
>
> Is there a higher then normal amount of earthquakes happening
> recently? haiti, japan just had one for 6.9, there was apparently one
> in illinos a few weeks back, one on the Russia/China/N.Korean border
> and now Chile?

Random events come in bunches - something I always stop to remind myself
of whenever there is a sudden bunch of quakes, celebrity deaths, plane
crashes, etc. Especially with relatively unusual events like
great-quakes and plane crashes, it can be tough to see if there is any
signal in the noise - a job I have to leave to experienced statisticians.

The world averages one "great" (8+) earthquake/year which, of course,
means some years like 2008 have none but 2007 had four. 7-7.9 like Haiti
or our own Loma Prieta quake are far more common averaging ~17/year.

Haiti is a catastrophe not because the quake was of unusual size (it
barely made it into the 7-7.9 category and released less that 1/15 the
energy of the Chile quake) but because the hypocenter was both shallow
and fairly close to Port-au-Prince combined with terrible construction
standards and virtually non-existent emergency-response capabilities in
Haiti.

Some general quake stats/facts are here:
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/year/eqstats.php

Cheers,
Steve

scrawford(at)pinpointresearch(dot)com (Steve Crawford) writes:
> Marc G. Fournier wrote:
>>
>> Is there a higher then normal amount of earthquakes happening
>> recently? haiti, japan just had one for 6.9, there was apparently
>> one in illinos a few weeks back, one on the Russia/China/N.Korean
>> border and now Chile?
>
> Random events come in bunches - something I always stop to remind
> myself of whenever there is a sudden bunch of quakes, celebrity
> deaths, plane crashes, etc. Especially with relatively unusual events
> like great-quakes and plane crashes, it can be tough to see if there
> is any signal in the noise - a job I have to leave to experienced
> statisticians.

I'll nit pick a little bit...

Random events are often *noticed* when there is some reason to think
it's an unusually large batch.

Nobody really notices the carnage on the highways, because,
stochastically, there are such a large number of events, both positive
and negative (e.g. - millions of people making it home safely, and a
tiny number that don't) that it's difficult for there to be a
sufficiently large number of "adverse events" to notice.

People are a lot more worried about terrorists than about car accidents,
even though the latter are *enormously* more likely to cause one's
demise, by a *huge* factor. (This mismeasurement irritates me a lot,
particularly when I visit airports!)

2010 has had more news about earthquakes than other nearby years, but as
you say, it is not obvious that there is any signal to be found in the
noise.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deadly_earthquakes_since_1900> is
an interesting list. Very few quakes are listed for 2009; I wonder if
this results from events not being reported yet? Preceding years
consistently have quite a lot of deadly earthquakes, dating back for
many years. From that list, Chile has been seeing pretty potent
earthquakes on a regular basis since 1905.

I'm mighty glad to hear that Alvaro is OK, and that things weren't too
disastrously shaken up, for him.
--
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be if that didn't happen." -- Steven Wright

On Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 11:11 PM, Chris Browne <cbbrowne(at)acm(dot)org> wrote:
> Nobody really notices the carnage on the highways, because,
> stochastically, there are such a large number of events, both positive
> and negative (e.g. - millions of people making it home safely, and a
> tiny number that don't) that it's difficult for there to be a
> sufficiently large number of "adverse events" to notice.

I don't think the number of positive events factors into it. It's that
the law of large numbers kicks in and the rate of death is pretty much
constant. Every now and then there's an atypical weekend for a given
town or city and the death toll spikes and people do in fact notice.
Suddenly the news is filled with stories about the carnage the prior
weekend and various imagined causal factors just like when the stock
market goes up or down and the news people try to explain why.

> People are a lot more worried about terrorists than about car accidents,
> even though the latter are *enormously* more likely to cause one's
> demise, by a *huge* factor.  (This mismeasurement irritates me a lot,
> particularly when I visit airports!)

Well there is also a difference here. Because there is an active
opponent in the terrorism case the security has non-linear game-theory
effects. In the car safety case you could spend 10x as much money and
reduce accident death rates by 1/10th. But there's a point of
diminishing returns and an optimal value somewhere. In the case of
terrorism it may well be the case that if you spend any money on
security you must spend a lot of money for it to reach the threshold
at which terrorists redirect their attacks elsewhere.

Earthquakes are of course not in that category. They just occur rarely
enough and then our perception of their severity is heavily influenced
by where they occur so clumpings are just inevitable.

--
greg