[RenegadeLucien]

So, on spikes vs natural variance: what I mean by "spike", at least in the context of saying that my old algorithms would rate spiky files way too high, was files such as ABCDEath or TTE which have one disproportionately note-heavy section that overshadows everything else in the file. When I say "natural variance", I mean that some arrows in a long pattern like a stream, jumpstream, or staircase will be harder to hit than others.

What I'm trying to avoid is to see a staircase, get a max range of 2 on up or down as you described, and falsely claim that the staircase is a spike when in reality, it's just a staircase. Whatever metric that is used to determine the rate would have to be able to tell the difference.