A return on "10 to the 4th Simoleons" and Science Data Correlation
I've been stuck working on this achievement for four to six months, and most of what I had read about this turned out to be inaccurate or simply false.
First of all, as I wrote, this achievement is sim specific, which makes it painful, as it means an insane lot of work.
Second, you can only start to "Correlate Science Data" once your "Science"skill reaches level five. Unless planing not to work it intensively, I strongly recommend against it, because the "Science Facility" cool down decreases a lot when your sim skill increases, from what I remember, level five means a two simdays cooldown, six means a simday and a half cooldown, seven means a simday cooldown, eight means twenty simhours cooldown, nine means sixteen simhours cooldown and ten means twelve hours cooldown. There is a skill challenge that says to half cooldown, which is not exactly true. From what I've seen, if you got it at a very low skill level, it will indeed cut it down by a half, but it seems that, no matter what, the cooldown won't be reduced to less than twelve simhours, so completting this challenge once you've maxed out "Science" has no impact. As you can see, increasing your "Science" skill fast really helps. Buy the second and third "Science" skillbooks. However, if you prefer to first correlate, and then work slowly on "Science" "Breakthroughs" during the cooldown, it's up to you.
Third, a little more about the "Science" skill. You can work your sim's "Science" skill by performing analysis on various collectibles (either in the world on in your inventory); by performing many experiments or cloning attempts or researches on the "Science Station", by playing with the "Group Science Project", "Ink Blot Test", "Testing Reflexes", and plenty more. Analyzing collectables slightly improve the "Fishing" or "Gardening" skills, when performed on relevant objects. The most important one is "Research on Samples" as they make your sims collect "Breakthroughs". Whenever your sims successfully achieve one, you'll get a notification "John Doe just made a scientific breakthrough. So many breakthrough, so little time!", which I believe is a reference to So Many Men So Little Time by Miquel Brown...
Fourth, regarding the simoleons gained. Everywhere I've read, it said that the amount given was pure random. This is inaccurate. After your sim walks out of the "Science Facility", you get a small report that looks like: "Sadly, John Doe failed to bring bring data relevant to fish migration. The other scientist present can't give you more that §15.". This is not just some randomly generated text. It means that the topic for this data correlation session was "Fish Migration". A non-exhaustive list of topics would be: "Fish Migration", "Gnome Genome", "Taste of Dirt", "Familial Resemblance", "Herbal Remedies", "PlantSim Growth", and a lot lot more. Unfortunately, I found now way to know in advance the topic of the next session, and it seems to be randomly selected when your sim walks in. Saving, "Correlating", to then load, and try "Correlating" again gives me two different outputs. This said, the topic decides what is going to be evaluated. Mainly, what they want is relevant "Breakthroughs", though "Analyses", recent specific interactions, relevant samples, and such are also taken into account, with a considerably less importance. Carrying a large number of varied samples helps, but not that much. So, let's take the previous example. When the sim walked in, the topic was "Fish Migration". From what I've seen, it appears that what is required is anything regarding fishes: most important are "Breakthroughs" while "Researching on" "Fish Sample", though, "Analyzing" fishes (either in your inventory, on the ground, in the water or in a fishbowl or fish tank), having "Fish Sample" and interacting with fishes do help. I'm not sure how the game makes this calculation though, but it seems that each of those give your sims points, and at the end, on walking out, cash received is calculated like: * * . However, it is important to note that when a relevant "Breakthrough" is cashed it, it's gone, and cannot be reused. The most I've seen being awarded was §450, but it seemed to be an "Epic Success" or something. Most of the time, my sims walked out with between §150 and §250. About the other topics' requirements, some are obvious while some are not. "Gnome Genomes" seems to need "Breakthroughs" while "Researching on" "DNA Samples", "Taste of Dirt" seems to need "Breakthroughs" while "Researching on" "Mineral Samples", "Herbal Remedies" seems to need "Breakthroughs" while "Researching on" "Plant Samples", and so on. Other topics are more tricky. For example, "PlantSim Growth" seems to want breakthrough while "Researching on" samples related to "PlantSims", like a "DNA Sample" from a "PlantSim", "Plant Sample" of a "Forbidden Fruit". "Paranormal Prank" seems to want "DNA Samples" from specific occults like "Ghosts", "Fairies", and such, though I've had an odd with "Ink Blots Test" and "Reflexes Test" on those. "Familiar Resemblance" is still not clear to me, as I tried gathering "Breakthroughs" on "DNA Samples" of members of a specific family, but didn't get the right text... As I wrote, for many of those, you'll get a little something too for relevant recent interactions, but nothing like "Breakthroughs". When "successful", if one may say so, the repport will rather be: "John Doe brought interresting data relevant to fish migration. The other scientist present offer you §150 in compensation." or "John Doe brought interresting data relevant to fish migration that the other scientist present are eager to analyze. You received §250 for your work.", or somewhat similar
This said, though you do can make a very little sideline from "Data Correlation", it nothing like your sims career... A breakthrough likely takes two to three simhours to achieve, and it looks like a §200+ requires at least two relevant "Breakthroughs".
An important note: though no cheats or mods that I know of affect the cooldown, saving, quitting the game, launching it again and loading does resets it, sometimes allowing you to redo a "Data Correlation" right away (keep in mind though that you'll exhaust your "Breakthroughs" rather quickly that way and will only get the minimum money). It is especially usefull as I've seen the cooldown on the "Science Facility" bug sometimes, and show up insane numbers like "8555 days" or so...
