Geostatistics recast as Statistics with upper-case S
Written by Jan Merks
Topic: Sampling & Statistics
Date: August 11, 2010 20:17
Mineral sampling expert, consultant, lecturer, author, whistleblower, 'iconoclast', CIM Life Member
Young Matheron in 1954 took a shine to what he then thought was statistics. Professor Dr Georges Matheron in the 1970s saw it at that time as his new science of geostatistics. Professor Dr Noel A C Cressie in 1993 saw it more as what he came to call Statistics with upper-case S. He is the brains behind that sort of stats stuff at the Ohio State University. He teaches Statistics with upper-case S at OSU’s Department of Statistics. But why does he teach Statistics with upper-case S? Here’s in plain prose how Cressie put it in his Preface: “Notice that Statistics is capitalized to distinguish it from its other meaning: a collection of numbers that summarize a complex phenomenon – such as baseball or cricket”. Good grief! Could that really be the reason why he brought Statistics with a capitalized S to those who interpret statistics for spatial data? Has he paid any attention to the study of climate change? Turned out to be a bit of a mess, didn’t it? He cautioned elsewhere in his Preface, “We should not forget our roots”. But why then did Cressie forget his roots in mathematical statistics?

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