Come to think of it, I think a better way to analyze the effectiveness of various rotations would be to do what drop rate guides do in games like RuneScape - use samples of kill numbers compared to drop numbers. People put in how many monsters they killed and what they got to create an average drop rate.

Obviously this doesn't work properly for FFXIV. In order for it to work, you'd need to sample people who are undeniably using the same rotation. Then look at the differences that appear between players based on factors other than that rotation. One could keep reducing what is included to find percentages of what makes how much difference.