First snag can be solved by using and decent statistical analysis package (you don't have to limit yourself to quadratics, you can go cubes/logs/powers etc but it will take longer to figure the function for complex modeling.) don't bother reinventing the wheel for this stuff, there's a lot of free statistical stuff out there, i think you could even do it in Excell. there is even a site where you can perform quadratic regression on line: http://www.shodor.org/succeed/compchem/tools/quadfit.html(posted 9130 days ago)second snag is impossible, since scores don't increase continually by times played unless it's Hisa but even he has limits. the only reason galaga scores appear to increase quadratically is beause eventually you can reach a point where the difficulty is the same and you can repeat what you've done in a past level and score infinite amounts dependent on boredom/stamina or sore apendages.