I think the answer is that it’s always a rate; it’s just that the skydiving is such a rare event we can implicitly drop the “per chute” because we’re assuming i

I think the answer is that it’s always a rate; it’s just that the skydiving is such a rare event we can implicitly drop the “per chute” because we’re assuming it’s always going to be “1 chute”. If you took the skydiver instructor, doing hundreds of rounds, then suddenly skydiving should no longer be considered a “discrete event” — your determination of how to treat it isn’t based on the event-type itself, but the object undergoing the event.