I think your final point is the important one. Curating should be about finding great content irrelevant of reward.

I've read so many different theories about curation rewards and when to vote, but what happens when you wait to vote and forget to come back, or you wait to vote and a whale comes in and suddenly the post you found so rewarding gives you hardly any curration because you are no longer amung the first.

I personally gave up on understanding how it all works, and just upvoting the posts I want to upvote whenever I see them. LEt the rewards take care of themselves.

This was a hard decision for me to come by since I am leasing steem power right now and need some curation rewards to feel like I got my money's worth. But the headache of trying to figure out what and when to vote is not worth it. Instead I have fun with handing out my upvote to stuff I like, and let the rest pass under the bridge.

This is very good data though! Well researched and put together. If @paulag helps you automate it, that will be some great tool!