b values

Now you might be asking what the hell is b value? I'll tell you! Its the slope of the line that plots the relationship between the number of earthquakes of a specific size against their size. in general its 1.

this is an empirical relationship meaning there has been no real convincing reasoning of why this happens it just does. at the small end and the large end it breaks down but holds pretty much through small and large time scales and small and large areas.

Pretty cool!?
http://www.jclahr.com/science/earth_science/mag_dist/index.html
general
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2005/2005GL022679.shtml
an abstract with an example of how this is being used in seismology

I have one of the main papers talking about this in pdf form let me know if you want it!