The last 12 referral batches arrived at 27, 27, 37, 36, 18, 24, 39, 32, 47, 30, 32, and 31 days.

The average is 32 days, the median is 32 days, and we see both 27 and 32 twice. The shortest interval is 18 days and the longest is 47. But, the 47 was hopefully an anomaly due to H1N1, meaning we should probably use 39 as the longest.

That would mean, if there were no holidays, the soonest we’d expect to see phone calls being made would be Tuesday, September 8 and the latest would be Tuesday, September 29.

The most likely arrival date based on time between referrals would be Monday, September 21.

However, with the holiday schedule I spoke of in this post, it is possible they will hold off and send referrals just before they leave for their holiday. If that is the case then we may not see them until somewhere around the first of October.

And, of course, the most likely arrival date for those who believe they always arrive on or near the first of the month would be October 1. Again, I’ve never given that theory any weight, but if I don’t mention it people will squawk.

To recap: If we don’t take the holiday into account then the most likely date of phone calls beginning would be September 21st. But, if they decide to match up until they leave for their break then we won’t see the first phone calls until shortly after October 1st.

These When posts are about managing expectations. If we expect them to arrive around September 21st then we could start seeing early rumors as early as September 9th, and we’d see possibly accurate rumors somewhere around September 15th. If they are going to match up until they leave for their holiday then we may not see rumors start until the week of September 21st.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 26th, 2009 at 8:31 am and is filed under Analysis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.