Statistical analysis of vitrinite reflectance data—a new approach

• Published in: International journal of coal geology 2003-12, Vol.56 (3), p.277-294
• Main Authors: Fedor, F., Hámor-Vidó, M.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Coal; Earth sciences; Earth, ocean, space; Exact sciences and technology; Gaussian distribution; MAD; Median; Sedimentary rocks; Statistical analysis; Stratigraphy; Vitrinite reflectance
• ISSN: 0166-5162; 1872-7840
• DOI: 10.1016/S0166-5162(03)00111-3

The reflectance of vitrinite (collotelinite) particles is a widely used parameter as a geothermometer for the estimation of the thermal maturity of organic matter enclosed in rocks. However, several problems have occurred during the last decades, which can be traced back to basically three causes: human mistakes, technical problems, and problems associated with the structural and compositional inhomogeneity of organic matter. Whilst in most cases the first two types of uncertainties can be handled by standardization, the third can cause significant problems during interpretation due to its generally inestimable character. The suppression of vitrinite reflectance and statistical problems originated from small sample size, and outliers belong to this latter type. International standards, such as the ASTM and the ISO, define the vitrinite reflectance parameter as a statistical average of measured data, disregarding the fact that the average is an unresisting and unrobust statistical parameter. In other words, the average is very sensitive to outliers and distribution. The aim of this research was to find and test a better, more resistant, and robust statistical parameter used by traditional parametric and nonparametric statistics, which can be applied in practice instead of the average. Three categories of statistical problems were studied on coal and disperse organic matter (DOM) samples: the distribution of measured values, the effect of data number, and the effect of outliers on statistical parameters. The statistical experiments carried out on numerous original and generated sample sets show that the median (med) and the most frequent value (Mn), a special weighted average, are better parameters to estimate the thermal maturity of organic matter especially above 1% reflectance value.