Introduction to the Theory and Practice of Sampling: Get this seminal textbook plus a personal consultation

The textbook is an essential component of most learning endeavours. A textbook is both an authoritative first guide through a scientific discipline or application field and a valuable long-term reference. A textbook is traditionally the basis for a course on the curriculum of educational institutions, where it is most often taught by university staff (researchers, lecturers, teachers). But studying a textbook it is always a solitary activity; you can’t ask for clarification or for greater detail. However well a textbook has been written, it can never provide the personal interaction that a tutor can. This has been true for many decades—until now!

An additional service is now being offered to all purchasers of the book, Introduction to the Theory and Practice of Sampling: the opportunity to interact directly with the author via Skype, Teams or Zoom. Individual readers can now access up to two hours of interaction, in which to complete their understanding of the basics of the TOS.

The author invites you to a one-to-one meeting via the internet. Imagine how much better you will understand the TOS, how you can go deeper into areas that are of particular interest to you. This personal interaction is aimed at answering the questions that were not answered fully by your own reading. The author considers his job done only when you have no key questions left unanswered.

You must, of course, have bought and read the book first. After this the author welcomes you online for your personal consultation.

For the author, here is a rare opportunity to interact directly with the otherwise completely anonymous, dispersed audience of readers—what a joy for any author! While for teachers, there is a bonus in having many of your students’ or readers’ questions already answered, leaving you free to develop more advanced topics. Every stakeholder wins—especially you, the lone reader!

But don’t just take our word for it. In spring 2020, this new approach was tested in both academic (Ph.D. course) as well industry settings (tailor-made course for key company employees), see below.

The rate for individuals is:

• Solo (“one-to-one”), up to two hours): £85
• Bespoke, tailor-made sessions are also available; contact [email protected]

Already bought the book? Contact us for an offer.

Testimonials

“In order to achieve such a maximum outcome, the book should be formatted in a way to help self-learning. The book “Introduction to the Theory and Practice of Sampling (TOS)” is a very good example. I am a newcomer to the field of TOS, and this book was a mandatory part of a course in Process Analytical Technology (PAT). The book is well written in an easy-to-read fashion with many graphical illustrations, which helped me to grasp the rather complex concepts quickly. It has a good language flow, which is easily understood by all readers at a tertiary educational level (N.B. not many from lower levels would have any reason to interest themselves in such an esoteric topic as ‘sampling of heterogeneous materials and processes).

Many real-world examples of where and how TOS plays a major role are very effectively incorporated as the textbook flows along. An important highlight of this book is the page setup, where the printed pages have deliberately wide margins in which one may conveniently make notes, if necessary. The first three chapters perhaps take little more time to understand as they are performing the necessary role of introducing a quite specific terminology while introducing the broad background and application fields of TOS with the clearly exposed lead motif of heterogeneity. However the rest of chapters 4 to 14 can be read almost within one session in their furnishing a didactically useful, complete first overview of all concepts, elements and interrelationships in TOS. This is always presented with a focus on practical sampling procedures and techniques based on a common framework of introducing the necessary set of basic types of sampling errors – and what to do in order to eliminate their deleterious effects. Following this, chapters 15 to 19 provide a solid foundation for process sampling and variographic analysis, the latter a particular strong point of the book – which ends with a number focusing on the broader economical, business, commercial and societal aspects of sampling, quite a surprise in what would appear only to be a strict technical book.

I strongly recommend this novel teaching format. It is not often students are presented with an imperative like this: “You READ this book first, or else…” But this new format works! And it is especially effective for remote teaching and learning, not at all only during a time of social and academic corona crisis in which all the world’s universities lie empty. This format forms -, and will be an important part of future learning.

At the beginning of the PAT course I was actually worrying over how it would be possible to complete such a full course without ever meeting the teacher face-to-face in the class room. However this new “reversed format” of textbook teaching, coupled with a SKYPE, TEAMS or ZOOM digital platform, makes it eminently possible to communicate with the teacher effectively, and fully to one’s desire. In this case we were able to communicate directly with the author of the textbook, which not only allowed us to fulfill the subject-matter course requirement in a much foreshortened timeframe, but with a significantly enhanced learning yield as well. Perfect.”

Vasan Sivalingam ([email protected])
Department of Process, Energy and Environmental Technology, University of South-Eastern Norway, 3918 Porsgrunn, Norway

About the author

Kim H. Esbensen, PhD, Dr (hon), a geologist/geochemist/data analyst by training, has been working for three decades at the forefront of chemometrics, but since 2000 he has devoted most of his scientific R&D to the theme of representative sampling of heterogeneous materials, processes and systems (Theory of Sampling, TOS), and PAT (Process Analytical Technology). He is a member of several scientific societies, has published over 250 peer-reviewed papers and is the author of a widely used textbook, Multivariate Data Analysis (35,000 copies), published in its 6th edition in 2018. He was the originator and chairman of the taskforce behind the world’s first horizontal (matrix-independent) sampling standard DS 3077 (2013). He is editor of the science magazine TOS forum and of the Sampling Column in Spectroscopy Europe/Asia.