1Raman Centre for Applied and Interdisciplinary Sciences, 16A Jheel Road, Calcutta, 700 075.
2Department of Agricultural Chemistry & Soil Science, University of Calcutta, 35 B.C. Road, Calcutta, 700 019.
The analysis of clay mineral compositions for further classification on the basis of grades has been discussed earlier in this journal. This paper shows the fundamental statistical treatment of the compositional dataset that is required. It includes an analysis of the significance of the differences between compositional parameters of the different clay groups and sub-groups, linear discriminant analysis to differentiate them and derivation of centric compositions to grade individual minerals.
