When
When. That’s a good question. I’ve been thinking and speculating about this in a lot of ways, time to just let the math talk.
The last 12 referral batches arrived at 29, 31, 33, 26, 32, 31, 32, 28, 38, 28 35, and 22 days.
The average is 30.42. But, is it fair to put the 22 days in? Is that an anomaly, or something we can expect more of? I don’t know. I decided to take the highest and lowest out and that gives us an average of 30.5, just eight one hundredths different, but it just so happens that for rounding purposes it makes the difference of a day. If we just take out the lowest that gives us 31.18, a bigger difference, but for rounding purposes, not so much.
What I’m saying is that the math doesn’t so much care about this one short month. When we average the last year together, it doesn’t really make that much of a difference.
So for now, I’ll look at it the same way. Unless we see more of it, we’ll just be happy for the one time and won’t try to forecast it happening again unless we have reason to do so.
With that said, the “least time” is going to be a lot shorter, so I’ll give the two least times for now and will let people use whichever date they wish to use.
The two least times between batches is 22 and 26 days, the most is 38, and the average is 30. We see 28, 31, and 32 twice.
The soonest I would expect to see them this month is Wednesday, September 24th or Monday, September 29th. The latest is Friday, October 10th. The most likely arrival based on the average would be Thursday, October 2.
One thing to note, short months tend to be followed by longer months. Not always, but enough for me to mention it. If that holds true then I’d expect the next batch to arrive somewhere during the week of October 6th.
One more thing, we’re coming up on the Moon Festival and I’m sure the CCAA will be off some for the holiday. No way to know how that might (or might not) affect things.
September 9th, 2008 at 8:48 am
I think it is time to rethink the premise of the analysis. There is an implicit premise in this analysis that each match period is independent. If instead we assume that CCAA intends to do one each month, we would expect an average of 365/12 and we would expect that long months tend to be followed by short months.
So when you write that “The average is 30.42″, and “short months tend to be followed by longer months.” I conclude that CCAA is trying for one match a month. How about plotting a histogram of the match days. How many fall in the first through seventh day of the month? How many fall in the eighth through fourteenth? How many in the last seven days of the month?
September 9th, 2008 at 8:48 am
Thanks, RQ. Come on, CCAA, we’re ready for the next batch!
September 9th, 2008 at 10:36 am
The US Embassy in Guangzhou lists closures for both China and the embassy at this website:
http://guangzhou.usembassy-china.org.cn/holidays.html
Looks like China will be closed September 15 for the Moon Festival and October 1, 2, 3 for National Day.
September 9th, 2008 at 10:42 am
This is my first post, I am so excited!!!! Our LID is 3/27/06. I am an avid fan of yours! I log on sever times a day and I so much appreciate all of the hard work you do. The Moon Festival is Sunday September 14th this year. My hope is the CCAA will only be closed (if they close) a few days. Can anyone recall how many days they closed last year? Lets make a few moon cakes and get back to work!!! I have been looking over the February 2006 calendar. It looks like to me if we take out the weekends, February only has 13 more days to refer out. Am I crazy or does this make sense? We are all ready and waiting NOT so patiently.
http://www.ourchinaangel.com
September 9th, 2008 at 11:30 am
Thanks RQ – with a 2/27/06 LID we are beyond excited and crazy about the hopefully final wait. A question: we have been told that since the beginning of Feb 2006 was Chinese New Year, there should not be LIDs for the first two weeks of Feb, yet there were…can you shed any light on this??? Thanks for all that you do…our agency has refused to give any input on when referrals might be coming…without your analysis and consistent posts we would be so unnerved at this point in the process.
September 9th, 2008 at 12:30 pm
Our agency just posted on their websiite that they have learned from CCAA that February of 07 is out of the review room! Congrats everyone who is logged in that month!
September 9th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
…as always…thanks RQ for keeping us in loop….
September 9th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
tessmom:
I hope this will help. Lunar New Year began on Sunday January, 29 and the celebration ends on February 12. I believe the CCAA closed on January 29th -February 5th. I have not noticed any referrals earlier than the 5th of February.
September 9th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
I’m guessing referrals will be mailed on Sep 29, arriving Oct 2nd – 3rd. This assumes mailing before leaving for the 3-day[?] Oct 1 holiday. I just hope we get a decent size batch so we can have a new poll (since my LID is not until 11-09-06!)
Nancy
September 9th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
From what I remember, they usually close down for about three days, as the moon festival is treated like a family reunion holiday. Many families get together on this holiday, and often travel to do so. Similar to the US observance of Thanksgiving, where we, for the most part, take a weekend to celebrate. Chinese New Year is a two week event, and most offices are either closed entirely or working on skeleton crews or shortened hours. I don’t know that we can attribute anything to historical evidence of CCAA’s operation during holidays, as you just never know. I have seen them do a big push just prior to a holiday to get a bit ahead so when they come back they are not dealing with work that has piled up, and then again, I have seen them either slow down or shut down entirely regardless of the delays in processing.
September 9th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
I have never posted a comment, but my mother in law and I read frequently especially since we are LID 2/14/06. Does anyone have a guess how far out they may give referrals this next time? I’m so excited I just can’t stand it after almost 3 years. Also, thank you so much for all of the work you do. A couple of years ago, I didn’t like your projections because they were so long, but it turned out to be probably very accurate.
September 10th, 2008 at 9:41 am
Well, China keeps on insisting that abandonments are down. How ironic that a baby girl was abandoned in the brand new Bird’s Nest stadium during the Paralympics…
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5irsfN3vsp30QPgrUAOaYSuEKHD-w
September 11th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
Other than August, CCAA seem to send referrals out in the first week of each month? My guess is anywhere from the 1-7 Oct!