Kriging

Better roughly right than smoothly wrong? Dr Marcelo Godoy urges miners to ditch comfort models and embrace uncertainty for real planning power

At the 2025 AusIMM Mineral Resource Estimation Conference in Perth, AngloGold Ashanti's Chief Technology Officer, Dr Marcelo Godoy, delivered a keynote that sparked serious introspection across the resource estimation profession.

Kriging is cheating, the best estimate is a myth, and it's time resource modellers embraced uncertainty to do it right—and ethically

In a rousing keynote at AusIMM’s 2025 Mineral Resource Estimation Conference, Dr Clayton Deutsch—director and professor at the School of Mining Engineering, University of Alberta—challenged the audience to confront a fundamental flaw in how mineral resource estimators approach their craft.