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Re: I'm curious...
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We were able to do a principle-components analysis on the output data of a 64 channel IR spectrometer to reduce the number of highly correlated data frequecies to 11. This made the problem considerably simpler, and helped cut through all the noise in the data.

This was done by using an axes-shift-and-rotation coordinate transformation in a 64 dimensional data space and the resulting 64x64 correlations matrix was enhanced and analyzed with image processing techniques like pseudocoloring and edge/contrast enhancement. This allowed us to exploit the pattern recognition capability of the human eye to pick up trends in the data.

The 11 correlated bands were determined to correspond to crystal spacings in some of the metallic salts often associated with Au (gold itself is amorphous, with no crystalline structure).

No, I did not devise this technique. Some very clever geochemists did. But I did know enough math, physics, chemistry, geology and Fortran to code it up for them.

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