. ——~ UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ALAMOS SCIENTIFIC LABORATORY (Contaacr W-7405-ENG-36} P.O. Box 0 MERCURY, NEVADA 89023 IN REPLY H1-NTS-3337 MAIL STOP: 900 _ 19 October 1977 REFER TO: Commander, Field Command Defense Nuclear Agency ATTN: Colonel Charles J. Treat Kirtland Air Force Base, NM 87115 Dear Colonel Treat: Thank you for sending me the draft Chairman's Report and the draft Synopsized Minutes of the conference held in Las Vegas, Nevada on 4-5 October 1977. I concur with both the draft report and the draft minutes with the following exceptions: On page 4, item f, of the Chairman's Report the staternent is made: "It is envisioned that this profiling effort will use the iterative ‘one-half distance' techniques to establish the size of the subsurface pockets showing contamination levels in excess of 400 pCi/g PU 239/240." And on page 3, item 6, of the synopsized minutes the statement is made: ‘Moving one half the distance between greater than and less than sample points iteratively should provide boundary definition of contamination areas of interest." Both these statements could be construed to imply that the contamination can be characterized by a mathematically continuous function that can be treated by classical statistical techniques. I take exception to this concept and believe that the increased sampling points characterizes the contamination in a "shotgun effect: '"' i.e., that it decreases the probability that a significant amount of random contamination will be missed. trlte bef/ 4 ate YR, ‘e he ‘“ry 2 ve ‘ afay ae AGfeeee im nee fags ar nie if neh x eev4 th. er ee haaon “3 Tt ’ we 2 ae Se ur yt Hy a Neas