Sound statistics or goofy geostatistics?

It took a while to post on my website much of what I know about sampling and applied statistics in mineral exploration, mining, mineral processing, smelting and refining. My webmaster and I have done so in the format of downloadable PDF files. Cash flow is used to derive unbiased confidence limits for content and grade of a reserve, and of the proven part of a resource.

The Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum in 2007 made me a Life Member. I am the most irate Life Member of that iconic institution. Every year CIMMP asks its Life Members for donations. It wants to teach students all about mineral exploration, mining, mineral processing, smelting and refining. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it! But I have never donated a penny. Not as long as UBC’s Emeritus Professor Dr Alastair J Sinclair, PEng is teaching students to assume spatial dependence between measured values in ordered sets. Why doesn’t he grasp that each distance-weighted average does have its own variance? Did he ever peruse Clark’s 1979 Practical Geostatistics? She derived the variance of her distance-weighted average hypothetical uranium concentration. Alas, what she didn’t do was test for spatial dependence between measured values in her wacky sample space. So it seems that Clark’s take on applied statistics is imperfect.

Practical geostatistics

The odd mining mogul seems to pine for moral integrity but I pine for scientific integrity. Scores of scientists pay attention to my take on geostatistics. On November 14, 1990 I mailed the first of several letters to Professor Dr Robert Ehrlich, Editor of the Journal of Mathematical Geology. I did so by snail mail and enclosed copies of Precision Estimates for Ore Reserves and of Sampling and Weighing of Bulk Solids. On October 26, 1992 JMG’s Editor wrote, “Your feeling that geostatistics is invalid might be correct”. Attached to his letter was what Stanford’s Professor Dr A G Journel had written “a bit reluctantly”. I have also posted the letter on my website under Correspondence. It seemed to Journel that “my anger arises fro a misreading of geostatistical theory, or a reading too encumbered by classical “Fischerian” statistics”.

The next paragraph shows another ad verbatim example of goofy geostatistical thinking:

1 – Data and degrees of freedom

"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. It is that spatial dependence which allows differentiated local interpolation and mapping in general. Were the data independent one from another then only global statistics can be retrieved. In presence of dependence the classical notion of degrees of freedom vanishes; n spatially dependent data do not provide n degrees of freedom”.

Another stunning farce was Geostatistics for the Next Century. Geostatisticians from far and wide had flocked to McGill, Montreal, Canada on June 3 to 5, 1993. They had come to honor Professor Dr Michel David for his contribution to Matheron’s new science of geostatistics. I tried to get on the program but my paper on The Properties of Variances didn’t arouse any interest.

Way too many years I have been exposed to geostat drivel. It has made me a perfect cynic. But I do have friends. A true friend is a precious gift. Sometimes it’s tough to find out who your true friends are. Dr.-Ing Reinhard Wohlbier is a true friend. Trans Tech Publications in 1985 printed my textbook on Sampling and Weighing of Bulk Solids. Thanks to Reinhard it has now been posted on my website as a PDF file. Various papers I have put together for Trans Tech Publications through the years are about to be posted on my website. Reinhard has formidable knowledge of the handling of materials in bulk. I wish Reinhard and Ute well.

Todd Higden, too, is a true friend. He is Creative Director of Frontline Multimedia. He has set up most of my first take on Geostatscam.com. My website went online in September 2005. Todd has posted scores of downloadable PDF files in 2012. It takes less than ten minutes at legal speed to drive to Todd’s Office. I have more papers to scan and to post on my website. I want my readers to know the difference between sound statistics and surreal geostatistics. Todd does not need to know much about either but he'll get to know a little!

My partner for life and my son are far more than true friends. Hennie has never been awarded a PhD in Psychology for putting up with her driven hubby. In contrast, Ed was awarded a PhD in Computing Science at Simon Fraser University in 1992. He was also awarded the Dean’s Medal in 1986 and in 1992. My son and I did put together Precision Estimates for Ore Reserves. It was thrashed by our geostatistical peers at CIM Bulletin. In spite of that Erzmetall praised it for “splendid preparation” and published it in October 1991. We have also put together Precision and Bias for Mass Measurement Techniques. ISO did like it. So much so that it became ISO 12745:2008. Nowadays Ed leads the top-level Eclipse Modeling Project as well as the Eclipse Modeling Framework subproject. He has put on the same page his blog, my blog and the bulk-online blog. Now that’s cool!