Gy's sampling theory

Gy's sampling theory is a theory about the sampling of materials, developed by Pierre Gy in articles and books including:

• (1960) Sampling nomogram
• (1979) Sampling of particulate materials; theory and practice
• (1982) Sampling of particulate materials; theory and practice; 2nd edition
• (1992) Sampling of Heterogeneous and Dynamic Material Systems: Theories of Heterogeneity, Sampling and Homogenizing
• (1998) Sampling for Analytical Purposes

Gy's sampling theory uses a model in which the sample taking is represented by independent Bernoulli trials for every particle in the parent population from which the sample is drawn. The two possible outcomes of each Bernoulli trial are: (1) the particle is selected and (2) the particle is not selected. The probability of selecting a particle may be different during each Bernoulli trial. The model used by Gy is mathematically equivalent to Poisson sampling . Using this model, the following equation for the variance of the sampling error in the mass concentration in a sample was derived by Gy:

$V={\frac {1}{(\sum _{i=1}^{N}q_{i}m_{i})^{2}}}\sum _{i=1}^{N}q_{i}(1-q_{i})m_{i}^{2}\left(a_{i}-{\frac {\sum _{j=1}^{N}q_{j}a_{j}m_{j}}{\sum _{j=1}^{N}q_{j}m_{j}}}\right)^{2}.$

in which $V$ is the variance of the sampling error, $N$ is the number of particles in the population (before the sample was taken), $q_{i}$ is the probability of including the $i$th particle of the population in the sample, $m_{i}$ is the mass of the $i$th particle of the population and $a_{i}$ is the mass concentration of the property of interest in the $i$th particle of the population.

It is noted that the above equation for the variance of the sampling error is an approximation based on a linearization of the mass concentration in a sample.

See also

• Statistical sampling