Hi Kevin
 
Can I refer you to the works of Herbert Sichel which was developed exactly for this problem, earliest paper Trans Inst Min Metall 1949. Or you can download my 1987 SAIMM paper from http://uk.geocities.com/drisobelclark/resume which describes Sichel's work.
 
Isobel
http://geoecosse.bizland.com

"Kevin Lowe (Office Park)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Hi,
How should one treat obvious gold grade outliers from samples collected from a belt?

The sampling is carried out by an automatic belt sampler prior to the ore being milled. The samples are collected and stored in a bin until there is approximately 1 ton of sample. The bin is then sent off to a lab which crushes and splits the 1 ton bin sample to produce 8 separate samples which are then assayed. Assuming there are no issues with the lab procedures, how should one treat a very high value?

For example purposes, say the 8 samples returned grades (g/t) of 2.8, 4.6, 5.2, 4.5, 35.6, 3.6, 4.2, 4.7. The arithmetic mean for the eight is 8.15g/t but if the one high grade is removed the arithmetic mean is 4.23g/t. Should I simply exclude the high value or should I cut the value of the sample to some arbitrary value (say the upper 95% confidence limit)? Although individual chip samples collected from the orebody, for the purposes of evaluation, are highly skewed, the samples from the bin approximate a normal distribution (excluding the high value).

I look forward to any comments or perhaps direction to papers or web sites on this topic.

Many Thanks

Kevin Lowe



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