frankly keith, i think you are over-analyzing this whole thing.
i have tried to think about it this way ... how do i use the car?
A: mostly (1) city, (2) neighborhood, or (3) highway driving?
B: what rpm do i want be turning while cruising on the highway?
C: what gear do i want to be in when going through the neighborhood?
if (B) is the main thing, then look at the tables and find the rpm that matches the speed you want to cruise at. that will tell you the gear
i spend much more time in (1) and (2), so C was more important than B (this was when i had a manual)
for me, when i had the manual, not shifting into 3rd in the neighborhoods had elevated importance simply because i spend alot of my driving time tooling through neighborhoods on my way to the places i go alot ... the store, dropping off or picking up the kids, ... if i want to enjoy the car, then that is a big part of the time i want to be painless. what i found was that with 3.73s, the speeds of normal neighborhood driving always seemed fluctuate between being too high for 2nd and too low for 3rd, so i ended up going back and forth between those 2 alot. i found it annoying.
i also tend to gravitate to about 70mph on the highway, which with 3.27 gears happens to be very close to 2000 rpm, which also happens to be my ideal highway cruising rpm.
so 3.27s is the right gear for me.