My son and I knew exactly what was wrong in David’s 1977 Geostatistical Ore Reserve Estimation. But it would be the next Millennium before Matheron’s work was posted on the internet. So, I wrote ten letters to JMG’s Editor-in-Chief between November 14, 1990 and August 4, 1992. I had mailed drafts of several papers on different topics, and called him several times. I had also mailed him a copy of my book on Sampling and Weighing of Bulk Solids. I was quite pleased to have received a copy of Journel’s response to my various notes. The more so since JMG’s Editor-in-Chief wrote, “Your feeling that geostatistics is invalid might be correct”. Such a pity that he left. What I still don’t know is whether he jumped or was pushed.
Journel had written “It seems to me that Merks’ anger arises from a misreading of geostatistical theory, or a reading too encumbered by classical “Fischerian” [sic!] statistics”. He really got into the nitty-gritty of geostatistics when he pointed out “The very reason for geostatistics or spatial statistics in general is the acceptance (a decision rather) that spatially distributed data should be considered a priori as dependent one to another, unless proven otherwise.” Journel couldn’t have said it any worse. It’s a textbook case of circular logic. Accept spatial dependence between ordered sets of measured values in sample spaces and sampling units. Do not prove otherwise by applying Fisher’s F-test. What a bunch of blatant blarney! Who wouldn’t get angry?
A peeved student of geostatistics and a friend of mine had gifted me his pre-read copy of Journel & Huijbregts 1978 Mining Geostatistics. On page 1 the authors define what the book is all about. Here’s literally what they wrote: Etymologically, the term geostatistics designates the statistical study of natural phenomena. G Matheron (1962) was the first to use this term extensively, and his definition will be retained: “Geostatistics is the application of the formalism of random functions to the reconnaissance and estimation of natural phenomena.”
In a footnote on the very same page Journel & Huijbregts mentioned J Serra and A Maréchal. David’s 1977 Geostatistical Ore Reserve Estimation, too, mentioned J Serra and A Maréchal. In fact, David took this example from Serra and Maréchal’s 1970 Random Kriging. Matheron’s 1970 Random Functions and their application in Geology, too, was presented at the 1970 Geostatistics colloquium on campus at The University of Kansas in June 1970. And so was Agterberg’s 1970 Autocorrelation Functions in Geology.
That’s when I made up my mind to study the lives and times of the greatest geostatistical minds on our little planet. Journel had gone to Stanford University in 1978 as a Visiting Associate Professor of Applied Earth Sciences. He liked it so much that he never left. As a matter of fact, he has spent more time teaching geostatistics at Stanford than he studied it under Matheron’s humdrum guidance. Journel was Mining Project Engineer at Matheron’s Centre de Morphologie Mathematique from 1969 to 1973. Journel was Matheron’s most gifted disciple by far. His list of honors and awards is striking to say the least. From 1973 to 1978 he did time as Maitre de Recherches at Matheron’s Centre de Geostatistique. Professor Dr A G Journel has been teaching Stanford’s students from 1978 to the present. He has taught them all of his own silly nitty-gritty on Matheron’s novel science of geostatistics.
