Average days between events - a question

[happsky]

I've been trying to work out the average number of days between events and I've run across a problem.
The top event - Case A - is straightforward. Over a 17-day period, there's an average of 7 days between events.
Case B is similar, I think - there's still an average of 7 days between events.
But what about Case C, when there's an event on two consecutive days? My guess is that the Case C average is 2.2 days between events,
but I really have no idea if that's correct. Advice would be very welcome!

 

[Harry_the_cat]

There are 5 values to find the average of:

(1+5+0+2+3)/5 =11/5 =2.2

 

[Dr.Peterson]

I've been trying to work out the average number of days between events and I've run across a problem.
The top event - Case A - is straightforward. Over a 17-day period, there's an average of 7 days between events.
Case B is similar, I think - there's still an average of 7 days between events.
But what about Case C, when there's an event on two consecutive days? My guess is that the Case C average is 2.2 days between events,
but I really have no idea if that's correct. Advice would be very welcome!


View attachment 29518

A second issue is how days "between events" are counted. You are considering an event to take up an entire day, and not counting either day as part of the interval. For many purposes we would count "days between events" as the time from the start of one event to the start of the next. In that case, the first example has 8 days between events.

It may be necessary to know more about the context.

 

[happsky]

There are 5 values to find the average of:

(1+5+0+2+3)/5 =11/5 =2.2

Thanks, Harry_the_cat, that's the way I saw it. It seems to me that whenever two events occur on consecutive days, another divisor needs to be added.

A second issue is how days "between events" are counted. You are considering an event to take up an entire day, and not counting either day as part of the interval. For many purposes we would count "days between events" as the time from the start of one event to the start of the next. In that case, the first example has 8 days between events.

It may be necessary to know more about the context.

Dr.Peterson, thanks for your response. The tables I depicted are simplified examples - the real thing spans close to five years. To clarify further, there will only ever be one event on the days when they occur. There are actually many occurrences of two consecutive events - probably around 15, but I havn't yet counted them accurately.