Some twenty years ago my son and I submitted to CIM Bulletin a paper on Precision Estimates for Ore Reserves. David, CIM Bulletin`s reviewer, blew a fuse because we didn`t refer to `twenty years of geostatistical literature`. We did study David`s 1977 Geostatistical Ore Reserve Estimation and Clark`s 1979 Practical Geostatistics. Neither author showed how to test for spatial dependence. So, we showed how to test for spatial dependence between gold assays determined in bulk samples taken from twelve (12) rounds in a drift. CIM Bulletin was but one of several journals to reject our paper. Yet, it was praised by and published in Erzmetall 44, October 1991. We could not show how to estimate the intrinsic variance of gold because but a single bulk sample was taken from each round.
It was easy to estimate the intrinsic variance of gold in Bre-X’s phantom resource. Bre-X’s quality control program was based on selecting and testing duplicate test portions of every tenth crushed and salted core sample. The set of duplicate gold assays for Bre-X’s bonanza borehole BSSE198 gave enough degrees of freedom to estimate the analytical variance with a proper degree of precision. Fisher’s F-test proved that the analytical variance and the first variance term of the ordered set are statistically identical. Hence, the intrinsic variance of gold in BSSE198 was statistically identical to zero. Plenty of placer gold was present in crushed and salted core samples but Bre-X’s bonanza borehole BSSE198 was barren.

This blog is for all of us who at one point or another faced an issue that needed to be resolved quickly and must not happen again. Are you the subject expert in the area of the majority of issues? Chances are that you are not and even the people that are called experts, technicians, engineers, etc. may not be quite up to it either, but you find out about this way too late. This is a very frustrating, time consuming and of course costly event. There are countless examples of such cases that are all about frustrated customers that continue facing a problem that sub vendors and other third parties could not resolve for them either. For instance the Bulk-Online.com/Forum Forum is such an area where people turn for last resort help. Although, you can do a lot if not all on your own. All it takes is a blank piece of paper, ask five “W” questions and possess the diligence to look at all the details of the issue and the experts will like you for doing a lot of the leg-work research upfront.

By Jon A. Barrett – Business Development Specialist, Interior Maintenance Company, Inc

Combustible Dust, (or Explosive Dust), cleaning, is a required preventative maintenance program, in manufacturing and production facilities, to prevent safety hazards, possible fires and explosions, and for proper Indoor Air Quality.  Combustible dust is fine particulate dust, which is generated from products such as wood, metals, grains, agricultural, chemicals, plastics, paper, and carbonaceous products.

The manufacturing and production facilities equipment and machinery, pulverize, mill, grind, crush, macerate, and cut the bulk product.  In return, dust is generated, and accumulates on all equipment and facility structure surfaces.  The fine powder dust, which is suspended on the higher, inaccessible and unnoticeable surfaces, is the most problematic, for combustible dust.

Health Effects of Dust
Combustible Dust, can impact and affect, the facility workers health, leading to illnesses, and injuries.  “The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that 6.1 percent of private-sector employees suffered 5.7 million workplace injuries and illnesses in 2000. Forty-six percent of those injury cases required days away from work for recuperation or restricted work activity.

Ancient people used to believe that the Earth was flat and it was not until roughly 500 years ago that we acknowledged the concept of our Mother-ship being a sphere. The technological tsunami that has been well on its way since the World Wide Web kicked into high gear in the mid Nineties managed to flatten the world again. As we keep surfing the top of the wave – and the Internet – we finally have a tool that has great potential for countries and people of any ethnical and religious background to participate in business globally without having to ever leave their houses.
There is not a week that goes by where businesses call or e-mail me offering their products and engineering services – from more than 8000 Kilometers away. Not only does our technology finally offer opportunities to those of us who used to suffer from centuries of colonialism and its ugly repercussions, it also has proven itself by making business more transparent and thus fairer in general. The times are gone by when manufacturers tried to manipulate the quotation and buying process by controlling if not limiting information. Now we just need a browser and a good search engine and wealth of information opens itself up to us. The Bulk Blog and the Bulk Online Forum are just the case in point for this phenomenon.
This type of trading makes the whole quotation and buying experience much fairer and provides unique business opportunities for producers that are sincere and genuine in what they offer to the market. The emergence of social marketing that at its root is basing a company’s success to think about inviting customers to buy instead of pushing themselves onto the customer and actively having to sell products or services. What that means is that now a consumer has so many choices that what a seller offers had better be providing value to them. It should (I feel it is a must) be offered for customers to take at their free will without manipulation. The Web lowers the smoke screen that conventional sales and distribution outlets used to benefit from and raises the bar for us all to be honest. Consultants are probably the only ones who could argue that there income are threatened by the free information made available on the Net. On the other hand, they also have a great chance to use the technology to their benefit. Even the Web cannot exist without relationships that are based on trust and commitment management. There still need to be people who need to work on answering Web based requests.
Of course then there is the rate of speed at which one can acquire knowledge and do business. It is fascinating to me that nowadays I have the opportunity to not travel to a job site any more because you I log on to the machinery controllers and “be there” without being there. Machinery troubleshooting is possible from wherever we have access to the Net. Even better, you are even alerted by the machine with an SMS or e-mail that it is on trouble. Can you imagine how much time, money and natural resources you – and therefore your customer – do not need to spend anymore? Plant managers have an opportunity assessing life cycle costs for product ranging from a small blower to high value assets such as kilns – phenomenal.
I have trouble nowadays thinking back to a time when we did not have technological marvels such as E-Mail, Skype, Twitter, customer relationship databases, Intranets, Microsoft Roundtable and so many more. It still comes with disadvantages such as leaving poor folks out who do not have the money to participate. The Internet has changed our lives forever and it has brought us humans closer together than ever before in history. It also will provide well for entities that use the technology in a way that is beneficial for all the stake and share holders – including the customer as well as our environment. How flat can the Earth get?

Professor Dr Roussos Dimitrakopoulos came up all the way from Down Under to chair a Forum on Geostatistics for the Next Century at McGill University on June 3-5, 1993. His task was to honor Professor Dr Michel David for writing the very first textbook on Matheron’s new science of geostatistics. What David didn’t know was how to test for spatial dependence and how to count degrees of freedom. He wrote his first textbook against all odds since he didn’t even know that functions do have variances. I have written a bit about the properties of variances. So, I send by registered mail an abstract to that futuristic forum at McGill University. Some person at McGill’s Conference Office encouraged me in an unsigned letter of March 31, 1993, to submit my abstract to another event. I’ll dig up more bits and pieces about the properties of variances.
Dimitrakopoulos likes McGill a lot. In fact, he settled down in La Belle Province after the Bre-X fraud was no longer on his mind. In a candid interview with the National Post on August 15, 2005, he clarified the intricacies behind his valuations of mining projects. Here’s what he said, “You drill a few holes, you think you understand something but what you know is very, very little. Uncertainty means probabilistic models, and there are a gazillion types of them.” How about that? Some mining investors might wonder how RD selects the least biased probabilistic model. Peter Ravenscroft, a senior executive with Rio Tinto and an expert at geostatistics himself, thinks what RD does is kind of cool and gave him a stack of dough.
Professor Dr Roussos Dimitrakopoulos was present at APCOM 2009 in Vancouver, British Columbia. The first line of his abstract reads, “Conventional approaches to estimating reserves and optimizing mine planning and production forecasting result in single, often biased forecasts.” I wonder what would have happened if Stochastic Mine Planning Optimization: New Concepts, Applications, and Monetary Value in an Ever Uncertain Market, had been applied to Bre-X’s exploration data. Financial institutions should demand that the International Organization for Standardization set up a Technical Committee on Reserve and Resource Estimation. It’s long past due. Matheron thought he was a statistician in 1954. Yet, his Note Statistique No 1 shows he didn’t know how to test for spatial dependence between metal grades in ordered core samples. Neither did he know how to derive the variances of length-weighted average lead and silver grades determined in core samples of variable lengths. So much for Matheron’s new science of geostatistics!

In pneumatic conveying, the air molecules pass the material particles and when they touch, the combination of the 2 exchange electrons until electrostatic equilibration is reached.

When the air and material part from each other, the exchanged electrical charges remain also separated and leave the particles electro statically charged.

In the example of pvc-resin, the air becomes positively charged and the pvc-resin becomes negatively charged. (see tribo electric series)

This phenomenon is called the tribo-electro effect.

The electrostatic charge of a particle increases with the number of contacts between air molecules and the particles until the maximum possible charge exchange is reached.

The maximum possible charge exchange is limited by the ratio between product particles and air particles. (In fact this is the Solid Loading Ratio).

In the example of PVC-resin, the pvc particles collect electrons up to a maximum.

This maximum absorption of electrons depends on the availability of air molecules, supplying these electrons.

A low SLR implies that there are more air molecules available per product particle, resulting in a maximum charged voltage.

Electrostatic charging is therefore stronger at low SLR’s

It`s a strange but annual ritual of sorts. Degrees of freedom fighters assume, krige, smooth, and rig the rules of statistics. Today`s fighters call that mathematical statistics. This year the stage was set at Stanford Campus on 23-28 August. Once upon a time IAMG stood for International Association for Mathematical Geology. A few years ago IAMG morphed into International Association for Mathematical Geosciences. Its present mission is to promote, worldwide, the advancement of mathematics, statistics and informatics in the Geosciences. This latest variant of IAMG talks about statistics without counting degrees of freedom.

The famous feud between Pearson (1857-1936) and Fisher (1890-1962) came about because of degrees of freedom. Fisher added degrees of freedom to Pearson’s chi-square distribution, and was knighted in 1952. Fisher’s F-test is applied to verify spatial dependence in sampling units and sample spaces alike. Pearson’s coefficient of variation, too, stood the test of time. Meanwhile in Algiers, young Matheron didn’t count degrees of freedom. In fact, he didn’t have a clue what degrees of freedom were all about. IAMG’s most advanced thinkers still do not count degrees of freedom.

Behind Stanford`s motto “The wind of freedom blows” is a rich history. It was President Gerhard Casper on October 5, 1995 who put a score of fine points to it. Who could possibly object to the freedom to teach and be taught sound sciences? When President Casper spoke in 1995 the freedom to assume spatial dependence between measured values in ordered sets had been entrenched in geostatistics since 1978. Herbert Hoover, Thirty-First President and Stanford`s very first mining engineer, would have been shocked. Who would put a mine stope together by casting dice? How could geostatistics have converted Bre-X’s bogus grades and Busang’s barren rock into a massive phantom gold resource?

Stanford University is Professor Dr Andre G Journel`s world. He has put down deep roots at Stanford since 1978. Journel teaches the same flaky stats that Professor Dr Georges Matheron taught him between 1969 and 1978. Journel was Matheron`s most gifted student. Matheron taught him all of the ins and outs of his novel science of geostatistics. What Matheron may not have told Journel is that he himself thought in 1954 he was a statistician. It took some ten years to teach Journel how to assume, krige, and smooth with confidence and pride. Journel was Mining Project Engineer at the Centre de Morphology Mathematique from 1969 to 1973, and Maitre de Recherches at the Centre de Geostatistique from 1973 to 1978. Not surprisingly, he worked as much with symbols as Matheron did in his magnum opus. What Matheron failed to show his star disciple is how to test for spatial dependence between ordered sets of measured values in sample spaces and sampling units. Matheron and Journel never found the variance of Agterberg’s distance-weighted average point grade.

That’s what Mark Corey wrote when Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources asked him to respond to my message. Mark Corey is Director General Mapping Services Branch and Assistant Deputy Minister, Earth Sciences Sector. He is the chief mapmaker for NRCan so to speak. I was ticked off big time when he called geostatistics a discipline. But I told myself it could have been worse. He could have called it a scientific discipline. He is also one of several experts behind NRCan’s 2008 “bulletproof” climate report. He testified at the Senate Committee for Energy, Environment and Natural Resources. I wish I could have asked him a few questions.
What I wanted him to tell me in plain words is why each and every distance-weighted average point grade doesn’t have its own variance. Dr Frits P Agterberg thought his distance-weighted average point grade didn’t have a variance in the early 1970s. Agterberg was wrong then. He’s wrong now. It’s high time for NRCan’s Emeritus Scientist to explain why his distance-weighted average point grade still doesn’t have a variance in 2009!
None of the five (5) points in the next picture have anything to do with pixels on a map. Each point stands for some sort of hypothetical uranium concentration that was measured in some way in samples selected in this sample space at positions with known Easting and Northing coordinates. I didn’t make it up but Dr Isobel Clark did in her 1979 Practical Geostatistics. She worried whether or not the Central Limit Theorem would hold so she didn’t derive it. Clark’s figure would have been a dead ringer for Agterberg’s 1970 and 1974 figures if it were not for her hypothetical uranium concentrations.