With the Richter scale, this means that if there is one magnitude 3, we can expect approximately ten magnitude 2s. If there is one magnitude 6, there will be approximately ten magnitude 5s, one hundred magnitude 4s, and one thousand magnitude 3s. We may see small variations, of course. But this distribution is a truism in seismology. No seismologist would ever suggest that having many small earthquakes would make a bigger earthquake less likely.
