Earthquakes

The media sure seems obsessed lately with earthquakes. Anytime there is an earthquake in the states it makes the news, or if there is any earthquake >6 in magnitude in the world, we hear about it. I'm not used to seeing so much earthquake coverage, and I think it's started to create a little bit of paranoia. I decided to look at earthquake activity over the past 10 years. The data below represents earthquakes greater than 6.0 anywhere in the world. I grouped the data by 12 month intervals, so past year represents April 2009 to April 2010. So each interval starts and ends in April.

Cycle	Average Magnitude	>6	>7	>8
Past Year	6.37	187	14	2
Year +1	6.35	160	9	0
Year +2	6.40	196	18	1
Year +3	6.33	177	10	3
Year +4	6.37	118	10	0
Year +5	6.38	179	14	3
Year +6	6.35	168	11	1
Year +7	6.36	138	12	0
Year +8	6.37	131	11	1
Year +9	6.39	175	14	0

As you can see in the data, there are a whole lot of 6.0 earthquakes every year. On average one every 2 to 3 days. This past year doesn't even have the most of the past decade. We also haven't seen an unusual number with magnitudes greater than 7 or 8, and the average magnitude of all greater than 6 is once again fairly average. What we have seen is an increase in earthquake related casualties, but this is only a factor of where the earthquake strikes. The increased casualties has caused the increased paranoia and coverage. However, the world does not appear to be in any more danger from earthquakes than usual. Actually, that's not entirely true. As the population of the world grows and concentrations of people grow, the chances that an earthquake will hit a densely populated area also grows.