Crunching Statistics

[keelec]

Hello Everyone,

 

We have a group of people who would like to submit a formal complaint to the Guangzhou Consulate about there delays in processing visa applications, as well as being stuck in P3 limbo, partly due to what appears to be LIFO (Last-In-First-Out) processing of applications.

 

In order to have anything “reasonable” to approach the Consulate with other than a vocal group of individuals, we need statistics. Perhaps someone here could put together a spreadsheet of everyone’s timelines.

 

However, I believe the Easiest way is to put your data into the website. I can download the info, sort it in Excel, and give you some idea of what boils out of the pot. Different people post slightly different information, but it should allow us to get some representative info.

 

http://www.k1k3.com

 

Please make sure that your records are up to date this month (November, 2003) so we can try to get accurate data from the tables.

 

If you haven’t put any data in, it would be helpful if you could put it in. We can use couples in all stages of processing from just starting to “Happily Ever After”. And, I don’t see any reason to restrict this to “Candle” participants either.

 

Perhaps we could forward the information to the 001 website to get some more couples to post information too..

 

If we can get a reasonable representative of those in process, I presume an e-mail can be sent out to everyone to make sure the information is up to date. Then we can analyze the data to see if there is anything that looks “odd” about the ordering of case processing. From the anecdotes on the Candle, it sounds fishy, but we don’t have enough data to present that.

 

Here is what I see as of today (11/12/2003) for China:

 

26 entries in the table (1 with no data except for a complaint about waiting for NOA2 for 5+ months, and thus is deleted due to incompleteness).

 

14 entries report having left NVC, or any activity after that. (1 appears to have an incorrect I-130 approval date and is not counted, and one has a P3 listed before NOA1 and was not counted).

 

Out of these 12 individuals listed as having cleared the NVC, 5 of them list as having received the P3 (or P4), and 4 of those list having received interview date or Visa.

 

4 of the 5 INDIVIDUALS reporting receiving P3/P4’s POSTING ON http://www.k1k3.com appear to have received their P3 and interviews more or less in chronological order of receipt of the packet. The last one was out of order by 10 days.

 

Other than a little delay, there isn’t much to write about.

 

The biggest delays are generally still at the BCIS offices here in the USA.

 

And, the longest delay I see on the web page:

Left NVC 2/15/2003, Received P3 6/20/2003 (over 4 months later)

 

----- Clifford ------

[JerryL]

Hey Clifford,

 

I can see that you have a love for numbers. I'm working on some graphical visualizations for the K1K3 database and would love to see what you think would be good statistics to render graphically.

 

I've lined up a friend to translate the K1K3 web pages to Chinese so that I can wrap the database in a Chinese front-end as well as the current English one, but she won't be available until the current Stanford quarter ends, whenever that is...

 

Jerry

[keelec]

Jerry,

 

Oh, sorry, I was one of those Math-Computer Science (Multiple Majors) in College Of course, I've forgotten most of that by now

 

Obviously it is difficult to get a lot of data from your system until more information gets posted. In many cases, bar charts would work well.

 

A couple of things that might be "interesting" to display.

 

1) Casual observations indicated that BCIS wait time was independent from country of origin. You have lots of BCIS data. Post a bar graph for wait times for visa processing based on processing location.

Nebraska, Texas, Vermont, etc.

You might also be able to do sub-graphs for each processing office which would be average processing time based on office and "quarter" start-time (oct-dec 2002, jan-mar 2003, etc).

Most people have posted either a mailing date or a receipt date. I would use the earliest of the two as a start date.

 

Actually, one of the issues you will run into is incomplete data (for whatever reason).

 

2) See if something comes up with NVC. At least you could get average wait times based on month of start time. Perhaps there would be some country by country differences too.

 

3) A second type of graph that would be VERY interesting would be time from start date to (interview or Visa issue) for different countries.

 

Since the processing in the USA is generally indpendent of the country, I would also do a check for NVC finish date to (interview or Visa issue).

 

This would also be an interesting stat to monitor over time. Is the embassy getting better or worse with time.

 

I believe that South Africa may hold the record for the processing speed, especially if you look at the Left NVC until Received Visa (6 days!!!)

 

Oh,

I would have to dig up my old statistics Student-T, Chi-Square, etc.... I wish I could remember what those all meant????? Anyway, the variance or standard deviation coupled with a small sample size in many of the sample sets may be so high that only a few of the numbers would actually reach any reasonable degree of statistical significance.

 

-------------

 

One final Note,

A list of abbreviations in your system would be very handy, for example, VSC, NSC, TSC, CSC, MSC, K1, K3, P3, P4. NOA1, NOA2, 129FRFE, etc.

 

----- Clifford ------

[warpedbored]

there is a website i frequent that already has many charts and graphs compariing the various service centers

not much has been done on NVC and the various consulates though

[JerryL]

there is a website i frequent that already has many charts and graphs compariing the various service centers

not much has been done on NVC and the various consulates though

Carl,

 

I presume you meant to post the URL of the site?

 

Jerry

[natrigon]

Hey guys,

 

In several posts I read about the 001 website or just a reference to 001. Can someone post the site address?

 

Thanks,

 

Louis

 

P.S. Not at GZ yet, aarrgghh.

 

 

UPDATE: JUST FOUND THE LINK, >> http://www.001.com.cn/forum/usa/index.html

[keelec]

Hey guys,

 

In several posts I read about the 001 website or just a reference to 001.  Can someone post the site address?

 

Thanks,

 

Louis

Here are a couple of links:

 

Don's Notes about the 001 website:

http://candleforlove.com/forums/index....t=ST&f=7&t=1804

http://candleforlove.com/forums/index....t=ST&f=7&t=2015

http://candleforlove.com/forums/index....t=ST&f=7&t=2016

 

Link in English

http://www.001.com.cn/forum/chinausa/index.html

 

Link in Chinese

http://www.001.com.cn/forum/usa/index.html

[warpedbored]

there is a website i frequent that already has many charts and graphs compariing the various service centers

not much has been done on NVC and the various consulates though

Carl,

 

I presume you meant to post the URL of the site?

 

Jerry

Gee it never dawned on me you might want to know what it is. It is the Nebraska Service Center Action Committee who has a section on the family avocacy site I checked the watchdog section where the charts are and it hasnt been updated since 9/28 It also appears that the BCIS has changed something in their computer system that has put a halt to java scripted searches the group has been doing This is very recent though so the data they do have i fairly up to date. Here's the URL

http://pub99.ezboard.com/fk1advocacygroupfrm53