Now that we have established the machinery used in our analysis, we review our approach in interpreting the data. The basis of our interpretations is the potential distribution theorem (PDT), and its connection to the cumulant generating function (CGF) of the distribution of the solute-solvent potential. For a general solvation process, the solvent (here, we consider either water, W , or the mixture of water and C 12 E 6 , W ⊕ C, to be the solvent) and the solute (here, either DS -or one of its alchemical intermediates, DS 0 or SO 4 CH - 2 ) are coupled through some total solute-solvent potential, V U,V , in the form of Eq. 2. Introducing a Kirkwood coupling parameter, λ, which controls the solutesolvent coupling: