An overview of the geostatistical toolkit is presented, from data analysis through estimation and simulation, with a focus on problems that typically arise in the assessment and development of coal deposits. Geostatistical procedures for the data analysis are described, leading to a discussion of the importance of spatial variation and the variogram. The most common geostatistical estimation procedure, ordinary kriging, is presented as an improvement to inverse-distance methods; two ways are presented of understanding kriging without recourse to the underlying mathematics. Estimation and simulation are compared and contrasted, and the benefits of a family of equally likely scenarios are covered. The paper concludes with brief summaries of the 16 additional papers in the International Journal of Coal Geology's Special Issue on Geostatistics, and provides two indexes to guide the reader to papers according to the problems they address and according to the tools they use. ► Overview of geostatistics: analysis of spatial variation, estimation and simulation. ► Simple, illustrative examples of methods. ► Tabular indexes to other papers in this Special Issue.