Well, three data points don't make a trend but hopefully it gives hope for future data points. This last Saturday I was at an event called Clothiers where I had three people take part in my experiment, Which is faster Kute-Uchi or Kumihimo? I'll go more into depth of the setup of my experiment but I chose a braiding pattern for each that had a similar number of elements and similar finished product.
Three people, two of whom were already string playing artisans, one with tablet weaving and the other embroidery and some tablet weaving, and one who...well let's just say is good at making Gordian knots when it comes to string, each braided for five mins on both finger looping and marudai braids. The two subjects with string experience were both vaguely familiar with loop braiding having done very little in the past but had not done any kumihimo before. So they skewed the results slightly but I hope that with enough data points even that can present a trend. Oh, their results; they both loop braided over twice the length of kumihimo.
But, the third subject, that's the real story here and something I hope to continue to see. See, here the subject had no experience with loop braiding or kumihimo meaning their proficiency was equal and still they loop braided 40% longer than the length of kumihimo.