American magicians Penn and Teller memorably describe the Las Vegas strip as being a spectacular monument to people who are lousy at math, and the same could be said for a few mining promoters’ mansions in Canada.
A particularly laughable example of this kind of mathematical magic is seen in Appleton Exploration’s promotion of its Malian gold play.
The second sentence in its recent press release reads: “MDL-09-056 has returned 192 grams per tonnes Au (6.17 oz/t) over a 10 metre quartz rich zone including 640 gpt Au (20.58 oz/t) over 3 metres.”
Gosh, ten metres of high grade — that sounds impressive! But wait a sec here, folks.
Break out your calculator and you’ll find that 3 metres of 640-gram material combined with 7 metres of completely barren rock (i.e. 0 gram gold per tonne) equals exactly 192 grams over 10 metres.
But why stop the fun there? By the same math, this hole returned 19.2 grams over 100 metres, or 1.92 grams over 1 km, or 0.192 gram over 10 km.
You get the picture.
Now check out our latest short position table and guess who’s just joined it in the number five spot.
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