The 5 shot groups could represent what your rifle is capable of on any given day and your 10 shot groups represent what your rifles is capable of on a 10 shot string conditions being equal on both groups. There are many things that happen whem You start shooting more rounds. Heat being one of them . Not to mention human error . The more rounds you shoot those odds increase . But dont reflect what your rifle is capable of. I guess what i am tring to say is a 5 shot group can and will represent what a rifle is capable of and so will it proove if your possibly in a better place with your tuner. I can take my 6mm pps out on any given day shoot 5 shot groups at 100 yards less then 1/4 " and do it every day over and over and over again year after after year. And it is 100% representation of what that rifle is capelable of. That same rifle shoots 10 shot groups day on and day out in the .350 range at 100 yards. so is it a .200 moa group rifle or a .350 moa group rifle? The take away on my comment is you dont need large shot strings to prove your tuner works or is set properly . If it can be verified 100% repeatable. large samples prove nothing other then your rifle build does not like large samples tuning your loads or your tuner brake wont change that . I dont know about you i dont need to try eating somthing i dont like several times to determine i dont like somthing . Your rifle is no different. I believe applied Ballistics will find out that tuners do work and in some cases when designed properly work very well. But the out come could be detrimental Considering the military would have no need to use any thing else besides factory ammo in a standard rifle and just tune it. We shall see where it goes.
That same rifle shoots 10 shot groups day on and day out in the .350 range at 100 yards. so is it a .200 moa group rifle or a .350 moa group rifle?
The way you've explained your take on testing is pretty much the same way most guys see it & I get that.
I would say that there's kinda 2 answers. The 1st one about the question quoted above. Obviously the rifle is really a 0.350 MOA rifle. Not because that figure is just worse but because that larger sample of 10 is far more likely to REVEAL shot diversion we wouldn't otherwise get to see.
The other factor which is an "elephant in the room" deal, is the aggregate of all those 5 shot groups.
We could legitimately view a 10 shot group as the aggregate of 2 x 5 shot groups. See where this is heading?
So you go out the next day to do some testing with the exact same loads, enviro's, winds, all else equal &, you shoot say 5 x 5 shot groups of 0.23 to 0.31 MOA. If you take the positional aggregate of each of those 5 shot groups plus those of the day before, what has the rifle really shot?
When we talk about what kind of repeatability a rifle has with a particular load, the true figure must be the aggregate & not each individual group taken on it's own.
EC himself mentions this about his "mentor" saying "oh that won't agg" talking about a particular cartridge or rifle.
Individual groups are not the entire story.
If you can take any far left shot of one group & place it with any far right shot of any other group & those two shots are further apart than your usual 5 shot group spread, the rifle isn't what you thought it was. All else being equal, the true repeatability of the rifle is the aggregate of every group it ever shoots, with that same load. ( in reality, it is every group the rifle ever shoots regardless of the load but, we'll leave that subject alone).
So, does that make a little more sense?
Can you appreciate why I keep commenting on this subject?