Talk about an arrogant set of posts. Duke's tone is, unfortunately, one of, "I understand this, how could you readers be so stupid as to not understand this!". When I read his first post, I wondered, not what revs per mile meant, but rather where did he get this number? I'm sure others had the same question.

If your goal is to communicate your thoughts clearly to a widely varied audience, then you ought make sure you explain all the assumptions clearly and with as much simplicity as possible.

As I was reading the posts, I kept thinking of the computer techo geeks that I have to deal with occasionally in course of my management consulting business. I often have said to them, "Slow down. Remember that the people you are talking to do not know what your abbreviations stand for and they mostly can't keep up because you are talking too fast. So if possible, slow down explain it in layman's terms." I see this over and over again. They are generally introverts who are in their own little world, and have difficulty dealing with people. Not necessarily placing Duke in this category, just making an observation.

Apparently, you are some sort of automotive engineer. That's fine. My experience is that engineers often have a holier than though attitude because they think they are smarter than everyone else (they often are, in their area of expertise), and think in terms of black and white, true or false. Psychologists will tell you this is true. Makes perfect sense. Gray areas could be dangerous in engineering.

Anyway, no offense meant, simply stating my opinion. I'm sure this is a useful formula to someone. Personally to me, it's a simple as this. My 300E is a high rev small six. The factory optimized the gearing to cause it to run at around 3,000 rpm at 70 mph. Works fine. I don't need to know the details.

Steve