Kriging game

A well-positioned geostatistical practitioner in the 1994 Jackling Lecture referred to "ordinary kriging", "universal kriging", "disjunctive kriging", "indicator kriging", "probability kriging", "lognormal kriging", and "an endless list of other kriging methods". Since a pair of measured values with different coordinates describe an infinite set of kriged estimates, selecting the least biased and most precise subset is an awesome task. Surely, the endless list of kriging methods, each with an infinite set of kriged estimates, makes ore reserve and resource estimation a daunting discipline of art and science.

In the real world, geostatistics cannot possibly provide unbiased estimates and 95% confidence limits for contents and grades because it violates fundamental requirements of classical statistics. Bre-X's infamous fraud puts into perspective what the difference between classical statistics and the geostatistical practice of kriging is is all about.

Classical statistics proved that the Busang gold resource was a salting scam several months before Bre-X's kingpins were honored by their peers. In the meantime, kriging continued to convert bogus grades and barren rock into the largest phantom gold resource the world has never seen until Bre-X's boss salter was nudged to jump into the Kalimantan jungle when the scam was exposed.