.38 Special/.357 Mag
The .38 Special and .357 Magnum are adequate and superior cartridges respectively. That should make you revolver fans quite happy. My only concern is their rate of fire. Some of the smaller .38 snubs are difficult to shoot well because of their diminutive size, horrible sights and tiny factory grips. The .357 Magnum in a short barrel has very stout recoil and a lot of muzzleblast. Both of these factors make for slower follow-up shots.
Like the .380, I would only carry these two calibers if I had a revolver I could shoot both fast and accurately and could manage a reliable reload. Remember, you don’t have high capacity magazines (or those 8-shot revolver cylinders) so you have more ammo — it’s so you don’t have to reload as often!
9mm, .40 & .45 ACP
That leaves the 9mm, .40 and .45. Go back and take a look at the chart again. There is a remarkable similarity in performance between these three rounds. They all stop about half of the attackers with one shot, and have a failure rate of 13 to 15 percent. Despite all the bluster you see on the Internet about not carrying a defensive pistol unless the caliber “starts with a 4” — the .40 and .45 do not perform significantly better than the 9mm in real life gunfights.
That doesn’t mean the .40 or .45 is a bad cartridge, it just means these cartridges don’t live up to their hype. While at the top of the heap, the .45 is far from a stopper 19 out of 20 times, as Jeff Cooper was fond of asserting.
I would feel completely comfortable carrying any of these three cartridges as my primary defensive weapon. Rather than worrying about the inconsequential differences in stopping power, I would focus on finding the most reliable and accurate firearm I could carry in any of those three calibers. If you can hit with it, and manage fast follow-up shots, and it’s reliable, don’t let caliber confuse you.