Results from Two Surveys on Relative Impacts of Different Ranks in Mixed-Tier Games

I'm investigating the relative magnitude of the impacts of various tiers of Summoner in mixed-tier games. For example, let's say you have two Golds and three Silvers up against a Plat and four Silvers. Is that a roughly even match? If not, which side has the advantage? How much of an advantage? In other words, how does the gap between Gold and Plat compare to the gap between Silver and Gold? Would you rather have (A) two Golds or (B) one Plat and one Silver on your mostly-Silver team?

I asked the community, and (as promised) here's a quick summary of the results: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1h8jjs6zStiMVOY7xkN6xn02FRYEqzK5TtK7g8WvGVOo/edit?usp=sharing

Sorry for the delay, and the slightly rushed nature of the summary. I've been really busy with RL, and we also just launched a new Factions arc, which required a ton of behind-the-scenes work.

Original thread:

(POLL) I'm going to run some experiments on the relative sizes of gaps between ranks. What do you think the results will show?
http://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/21gv4w/poll_im_going_to_run_some_experiments_on_the/

As for the experimental matches, we've run a few, but we have a serious shortage of volunteers, which makes getting enough data for proper analysis difficult. If you'd like to help us test these community intuitions by playing a few matches, click here for instructions on becoming a lab rat (or running some matches yourself). Any help would be greatly appreciated. We need Silvers in particular.

FOR SCIENCE!