: Lau: In the 4x4 metric tensor and the stress energy tensor, I've known that there are 10 independent parameters. But what are they, and how would you go about finding them?

There are a total of 16 elements of the tensor. 4 lie along the diagonal. These 4 are independent. As for the rest, 12 lie off the diagonal. However, the tensor is symmetric so determining the half of these on one side of the off diagonal determines them all. So there's a total of 10 independent elements. For some situations the tensor is known a-priori so you needn't worry about finding them. For some situations the space-time geometry is known and it can be calculated from that. For some situations you have an estimate of what it should be and variational like methods can be used to determine it. There is no one set way of finding the tensor.