0 0 0 0 and reply

By RE. WHITE
BirkbeckCollege
London,England

P hasorsor formulas? In thisarticle,I used that the reflectivities seenby seismicwaves

a phasorrepresentationto indicate why the
instantaneousfrequency of a seismic trace
can be negative and why it can be unstable
when the amplitude envelope is small. The
equivalentalgebraicrepresentationof the an-
alytic signal is well known and some may
prefer it, but I consideredthat phasorsgave
the more economicexplanationfor my pur-
pose.
where doesDoo JungJin’s analysistake
us? The inequality which makes instanta-
neousfrequencynegative is not very infor-
mativeunlessone realizesthat it corresponds
to a nonnegativeminimum on the trace. The
casewhere the amplitudeenvelopeis zero is
of pedanticinterestonly; moreover,another
small step reveals that the numeratorof the
equationmustthen also be identically zero.
I would agreethat instantaneous frequen-
cy is not the sameas Fourier frequency,but
the two are not unrelatedas instantaneous
frequencytends to be distributedabout the
“centerof mass*’of the Fourier spectrum.
Pwe random (iid) and spiky sequences. tudegivesthe magnitudeof reflection” arose
Spikinessand pure randomnessare not mu-
tually exclusive.An iid sequencemay have
a spiky amplitude distributionor a flat am-
plitude distributionor anything in between.
If Jin simply means that the phrase “well-
spacedlargereflectionsseparatedby” would
be better expressedas “sparselarge reflec-
tions in,” I agree, although it seems to be
somethingof a quibble.
T he kurtosis of seismicdata. The kur-
tosesof the reflectivities, i.e., the sequences parrots.Not everyoneis impressedby having
of simulated reflection coefficients, in the
examplesrangefrom 3-50. Theseare not the
sameasthe kurtosesof thesimulatedseismic
traces which are band-passfiltered reflex-
tivities and rangefrom 3 to around20. These
values roughly bracket the range of values
that I have met in practice.In The nature of
the non-Gaussian@ of primary reflection fourthordercumulantbringto the discussion
coefficientsand its significancefor decon-
volution (GeophysicalProspecting 1986),
A.T. Walden and J.W.J. Hosken found a
kurtosisnear 6 to be fairly typical in their
study of well-log reflectivities. From esti-
matesof kurtosisfrom seismicdata,I suspect
can be notably higher than those found in
well-log reflectivities.However, a consider-
able numberof good-qualitycomparisonsis
needed to make a convincingcase for this
becausethe effect of filtering on kurtosishas
to be unravelledand, more importantly,be-
causethe measurementof kurtosisis subject
to large estimation errors. More detail on
thesepointsis given in my articleM~inrrr~n
kurtosis phase correction (Geophysical
Journal of the RAS 1988)and its references.
R eflection strength and magnitude of
reflection. Jin pointsto a possiblesolecism
in my use of theseterms, albeit in different
contexts.My objection IO using “reflection
strength”insteadof “amplitudeenvelope”is
that “reflection strength”could be taken to
imply some simple relation to a particular
reflection coefficient when the reality is that
recordedseismicreflectionsare largelydom-
inatedby interferenceeffects.Amplitudeen-
velope,on the otherhand,is sinlply descrip-
tive. The phrase“the instantaneousampli-
from statingthatthe instantaneous attributes
are a way of representingthe size and shape
of a reflection event recordedon a seismic
section. Perhaps the term “size of event”
ratherthan “magnitudeof reflection” would
havemade it clearerthat the discussioncon-
cerneda distinctwaveform on a section.
M ore on kurtosis? A chief geophysicist
oncehumorouslyremarkedto me thathe had
always thought kurtosis was a disease of
suchtermsthrown at them and, in my opin-
ion, they oughtto be broughtto the fore only
if necessary.Consequently,I choseto em-
phasizethe ideaof spikinessratherthan kur-
tosis.I am not sure what insight definitions
of kurtosis, platykurtic, mesokurtic,lepto-
km-tic,Pearsonianstatistics,anda misnamed
nor what possible confusion they clarify.
Where does one stop? I am sure (hat three
paragraphsof suchformalitieswith no men-
tion of the technicalproblemsof estimating
kurtosisis not the right balancefor a pnper
in an appliedscience.IE

46 GEOPHYSICS:THE LEADING EDGE OF EXPLORATION AUGUST 1992