When taking data in the field you have no idea how things will turn out in the end. The plot shown here presents splash/dunk data for 2011. When recording the data I had no idea the end result would be so pleasing to the eye.
Here's the idea behind the plot. When dragonflies are observed to splash/dunk, they often hit the water multiple times – doing one dunk after another after another. We've observed as many as 6 dunks in a row before the dragonfly gains altitude and does a spin/dry at 1,000 rpm. The data for 2011 consisted of observations of 148 events combining for a total of 288 dunks. Most events consisted of only a single dunk (62 such events), and the average number of dunks per event was 1.9.
The exponential drop off in the number of dunks suggests that dunks are independent events – each dunk is independent of the dunks that precede it. Roughly speaking, once a dragonfly dunks there is about a 50/50 chance that it will dunk again. This is true whether the dragonfly has only dunked once, or has already dunked 5 times. The previous history doesn't matter. In a sense, you might say that dragonflies "live in the moment," deciding after each dunk whether to dunk again with no regard for what has happened in the past.
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