Drilling Recovery

Poor recovery is common source of

systematic error.
Do not rely an over-all average.

 Good drilling recovery in waste rock may

disguise a problem.
 Look at drilling recovery by important ore
zones (e.g. rock/alteration, structural
domain, mineralization style)
 Recovery measurements are poor in broken
rock. Monitor weights.
There is no less expensive measurement
a lab can make than taking the weight
 Within a given rock-type, weight/length
provides a check on stated recovery.
 Weight/length may be more reliable than
recovery estimated by length measurements
in broken core.
 Weight/length is also a good cross-check on
bulk density and geologic logging in some
cases.
Does drilling recovery correlate
with grade?
 Find drill sample pairs that are adjacent
(share a common boundary) where one pair
member is mostly in a core run of high
recovery, the other in low recovery, and
otherwise are geologically similar.
 Calculate the average grade of the low-
recovery vs. high-recovery.
 Use Sign Test for statistical significance.
Sign Test

 Treats pairs as coin flips. Equal values do

not count. Round values to be certain
differences are meaningful.
 Binomial theorem provides estimate of
likelihood of distribution of “heads” and
“tails” (in this case, which member of the
pairs is higher grade). Expect near 50-50
distribution.
Formula for Sign Test at .05
significance
 =INT((n-1)/2-0.98*SQRT(n+1))
 Where n is the number of pairs.
 Must have at least 10 pairs for .05 level of
test; more is definitely better.
 Example: for 100 pairs, the distribution is
significant at .05 if one group has higher
grade than the other < 39 times.
Statistically significant is not necessarily
“significant” to the project

 Differences between groups of a few

relative percent may have negligible impact
on project economics.
 Focus on the critical ore types and groups
Another Approach

Look for a general trend in grade with

drilling recovery
Approach
 Estimate drilling recovery of each sample
within some mineralized domain
 Group into bins by recovery
 Calculate mean and confidence interval of
each group
 Plot on chart to show trend (if any).
 A correlation does not show causality, only
cause for concern!