Thanks, Jim! Surprised he's never heard of that acronym. 
Here's my secret, I am 100% self taught.
As a kid, I was one of those who took something apart, then often later tried to put it back together - sometimes having "extra" parts left over... (whoops!)
I bought my car with a smogger chevy carb, rebuilt it and eventually sold it to a local and rebuilt a better donor carb for my car...
My carburetor knowledge has largely been gleaned from hands on experience, observing what's correct or where things are wrong and making them work better than I purchased them.
I rarely come across these vintage cores, which explains the size of my "collection" when stacked against the amount of time I have into it.
I did buy Cliffs book, and it is great, but I have been mostly focused on correct stuff rather than modifying carbs for all out performance;
My angle has always been "correct for my car"...
The first Pontiac 4MV Quadrajet I found was a 7041264 - I got it running pretty good considering how warped the top plate was...
The next was a 7029268 - that one I got running top notch;
Eventually this started spilling over to looking for what would be "correct for my model year" (think: Pure Stock Musclecar Drags), and what the differences were between my original equipment carb, or other 'correct' carbs...
As the years went on, I started finding more Pontiac 4MV carbs, and a couple Chevy/Olds cores with small parts to complete my Pontiac carbs - ditto for the pre-smog 4MC Pontiac carbs...
I then expanded to looking for, and finding information on "correct for 68-78 Pontiac" - because there are other locals looking for this stuff too...
I have genuinely been having some fun with these carbs, and most often I sell odds and ends of the extra stuff I pick up to fund buying more "junk" - at the end of the day very little of my annual income goes into parts...
So, I might not be well versed in correct carburetor terminology...
but I'm learning 
