Density tracers have come into wide spread use in Australian coal and mineral processing in the last decade. Their advantages over conventional methods for determination of gravity separator performance are speed of data acquisition and lower cost. A recent study on jigs has provided a data base which permits comparison of the precision with which partition curves can be established using conventional and tracer methods. This paper is concerned with the industrial and research uses of tracers and the statistical analysis of tracer and conventional sample data. Statistical methods for fitting partition curves to normal tracer data as well as a method for dealing with point counting data are presented. It is demonstrated, based on a case study of a Batac jig. that both conventional and tracer methods of separator evaluation provide similar levels of precision, particularly when dealing with coarse coal.