WORDS OF WELCOME

The Theory of Sampling as presented in textbooks is not a palatable product to be used by the industry. Most practitioners in the industry do not have the time to spend on the in-depth subtleties of the Theory of Sampling; they want a straight to the point guideline. The problem is that there are limitless cases on which many books could be written suggesting executives have no idea how expensive bad sampling practices can be.

This sampling congress highlights selected areas in the mining and processing industry where good sampling practices are essential. Unless the Theory of Sampling is presented in a Total Quality Management context, it cannot and will not fulfill its mission; it is an overwhelming fact that I personally observed for more than 40 years.

Many examples from specific industries have been observed and they all involve severe economic losses if the preventive knowledge of the Theory of Sampling is not taken into account by executives and their business administration teams.

Sampling correctness is the substantive core of the Theory of Sampling, therefore critically important examples should be reviewed during this congress based on the high frequency of their recurrence in their respective domains of application.

An important place should be given to the In Situ Nugget Effect because it has been the child left behind, both by the Theory of Sampling and Geostatistics. The necessary work devoted to the In Situ Nugget Effect is long overdue in order to correct this theoretical and practical deficiency; it has stunning economic consequences if left unaccounted for.

Blasthole sampling in mining open pits is responsible every year for massive money losses all around the world, therefore full devotion to this problem should review the idiosyncrasy of blasthole sampling, and corrective actions should be suggested.

The applications of sampling in process control are almost unlimited, and this should be the domain of choice for sampling manufacturers to offer their solutions at this congress. Most areas involved are dynamic processing streams of many kinds. The effective control of such processes involves a thorough understanding of process, sampling, and measurement variability. Chronostatistics, a pragmatic tool created by the authors of the Theory of Sampling, offers a convenient means to understand such variability in an unambiguous way. The applications of Chronostatistics are vast, from Quality Assurance, Quality Control, process control, sampling requirements optimization, discovery of structural problems, and much more, therefore a large part of this congress should be devoted to this remarkable, simple and pragmatic statistical tool. I always say to my clients that they do not take advantage of the all the data they collect every day.

Today, the industry is more and more concerned about the estimation of trace amount impurities in many products. Sampling of trace amounts of impurities or rare minerals presents huge theoretical, practical and economic difficulties. Yet, the industry in general is unprepared to deal with these difficulties, as observed in environmental sampling, sampling of genetically modified organisms, sampling of precious metals, sampling of impurities in pharmaceutical products, sampling of impurities in very pure electric copper wires, etc… It is of the utmost importance to devote time and resources to such an important issue.

Finally, ore reserve estimations are an essential part of mineral economics. As a result, a due diligence process is the inevitable part of the risk assessment reached by feasibility studies. Therefore, it is the Theory of Sampling mission to address and offer a logical auditing process in sampling for ore reserves estimations: this congress should suggest a strategy for this important issue.