Both very good suggestions – thanks for taking the time to share! I sure will implement this.
Great idea!
Two suggestions:
1) [...] if you technically open the flower once every 24 hours (not related to calender days), that could result in 2 openings on a single calendar day [...] As a result you could state that the flower opens "at least" once a day [...]
No, that is not accurate, and a critical mind would be totally right considering this dubious.
If you introduce a random time T between two openings, where T is on average 24 hours, you will have ON AVERAGE 1 opening per day, and ON AVERAGE 365 openings per year etc. BUT: You can (and will!) very well have time periods of more than 24 hours, too, i.e. you will have calendar days (and sometimes even two or more successive calendar days) with no opening at all.
So it is simply
not correct to claim "that the flower opens "at least" once a day".
Here is a quick example, when implementing the time T as a random value following a Rayleigh distribution, with an average of T=1.0 days:
Matlab code:
>> N=1e7; x=randn(1,N); y=randn(1,N); T=sqrt(x.^2+y.^2)/sqrt(pi/2); mu = mean(T),
>> hist(T,50); title(['Histogram: rayleigh distributed random variable T, mean=',num2str(mu)]); xlabel('T')
>> 100*length(T(T<0.90))/length(T), 100*length(T(T<0.50))/length(T), 100*length(T(T<0.25))/length(T)
>> 100*length(T(T>1.0))/length(T), 100*length(T(T>1.5))/length(T), 100*length(T(T>2.0))/length(T)
Result:
* In 47.1% 17.8% 4.8% of all cases, the time duration T between two openings is shorter than 0.90 0.50 0.25 days
But also:
* In 45.6% 17.1% 4.3% of all cases, the time duration T between two openings is longer than 1.0 1.5 2.0 days
