The American Society for Testing and Materials fell for geostatistics in the 1990s. It came about when statistically challenged soil and rock experts had cooked up ASTM D5549-Standard Guide for Reporting Geostatistical Site Investigations. I had brought my case against what Professor Dr Georges Matheron himself had come to call a new science to the attention of Mr James A Thomas, President of the American Society for Testing and Materials. I had done so by snail mail on April 19, 1994.
ASTM President
ASTM has yet to sort out when and why geostatistocrats have made such a mess of applied statistics. Matheron and his disciples brought geostatistics all the way to North America in the 1970s. The problem is not that distance-weighted average point grades morphed into kriged estimates to honor D G Krige. The real problem is that variances of distance-weighted average point grades AKA kriged estimates didn’t morph along but got lost. Kriged estimates and kriging variances are the heart and soul of geostatistics. David’s 1977 Geostatistical Ore Reserve Estimation and Journel’s 1978 Mining Geostatistics reject the fact that every kriged estimate has its own variance. Clark’s 1979 Practical Geostatistics, unlike David in 1977 and Journel in 1978, derived not only the distance-weighted average point grade but also its true variance. But here’s the cinch!
Having a PhD in geostatistics seems a must when assuming spatial dependence between measured values in ordered sets. Yet, it’s so simple to apply Fisher’s F-test to the variance of a set of measured values and the first variance term of the ordered set. It puts on view whether or not orderliness in sampling units or sample spaces dissipates into randomness. Who wouldn’t want to know? Geostatisticians would have known if they ever got around to counting degrees of freedom. Those who scored a passing grade on Statistics 101 are bound to grasp the properties of variances. Some may even know that one-to-one correspondence between functions and variances is sine qua non in applied statistics.
ASTM itself got on track so to speak in 1898. At that time engineers and chemists of the Pennsylvania Railroad needed standard methods. It made me nostalgic to read such an account of courage and vision. At that time there were no degrees of freedom to count. Geostatistocrats have never stooped to count stuff what can neither be seen nor touched. Once upon a time I was in charge with sampling shipments of Pennsylvania anthracite in the Port of Rotterdam. ASTM Standard Methods for coal were specified in contracts between trading partners. It would be a long while before ISO Standards for coal caught up with ASTM Standard Methods. Now I wish ISO will never catch up. Greg Gould asked me a long while ago what I thought about interpolation between bias test data. Good grief! That looked too much like real kriging! That’s why I put together a false test for bias in a previous blog. I wouldn’t want ASTM Committee D05 to dictate how ISO TC27 is to test for bias. But it may well do so!
Those who had master minded ASTM Standard Methods for Soil and Rock must have been smitten silly with geostatistics. My son and I had found out in 1989 why geostatistics is an invalid variant of applied statistics. My work for Barrick Gold in 1997 proved that geostatistical software converted Bre-X’s bogus grades and Busang’s barren rock into a massive phantom gold resource. Student’s t-test proved that crushed core samples had been salted with placer gold. Bre-X’s duplicates for every tenth test sample proved the intrinsic variance of gold at Busang to be statistically identical to zero. That’s the very reason why I’ll always work with applied statistics.
Here’s what I did point out in April 1994. Either fundamental requirements of probability theory and applied statistics are no longer valid or geostatistical theory and practice are fatally flawed. ASTM’s President wrote on May 13, 1994 that he had asked Mr Bob Morgan, Director of Technical Committee Operations, about the role of Committee E11 Quality and Statistics. What I wanted to study but never got was a copy of D5549-94e1 Standard Guide for Reporting Geostatistical Site Investigations. Robert J Morgan, ASTM’s Director Technical Operations, asked me in February 1995 to direct my input to R Mohan Srivastava.
Geological statistician
AKA geostatistician
Teaching Mo all I know about sampling and statistics tops my list of things to never do. It would take more than a few blogs to show what Mohan could have done had he grasped in June 1993 what was wrong with David’s 1977 textbook. That’s when Mo and his coauthor went to McGill University. As a matter of fact, that’s where the united geostatocracy went to praise David’s 1977 Geostatistical Ore Reserve Estimation. For crying out loud!
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