Frequency of Ferring and Misting births (Era 2)

[therunner he/him]

Hello,

do we have some numbers, or estimates on how frequent Ferring or Mistings are? I tried looking in Coppermind/Arcanum, but could not find anything specific.

Thank you.

[Quantus he/him]

There have been a lot of debates and attempts to work it out mathematically.  One barrier of that is that it's passed through "Spiritual DNA" meaning we cant be sure what patterns and ratio's it might follow generation to generation. 

This is the main "official" WOB that Im aware of:  

 

Quote

 

Kaymyth (parapharased) (paraphrased)

I asked another question about the population levels of Mistings, Ferrings, and Twinborn.

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

The numbers in the [Alloy of Law Mistborn Adventure Game] supplement are off. (It states the occurrence of Mistings/Ferrings is 1 in 50 people.) He said that they're not terrible, but they definitely are shown as somewhat more common than they really are. But he also said that they're not nearly as rare as people seem to think; for example, he stated that virtually everyone would know at least one Coinshot. So there are definitely a lot of Allomancers around.

And the occurrence of Twinborn would not be a normal statistical spread (alas).  As folks opined before in this thread, the Terris folk do tend to keep somewhat to themselves, so there's not a huge amount of population mix.  So Twinborn will be rarer.

I did point out that there had to be some mix, else we'd be seeing full Feruchemists around, and to that he mostly just smiled and looked mysterious.  As he does.

Footnote: Kaymyth later clarified that Brandon said that the MAG numbers are too high.
ConQuest 46 (May 22, 2015)

 

 

[therunner he/him]

Interesting, that would make them much more frequent than I assumed. So

1. Misting are more frequent than ferrings.
2. Mistings are less frequent than 1 in 50.
3. Mistings should be more frequent than around 1 in 200 (per Coinshot comment).
4. The distribution of Twinborn is not just combined rarity, due to Terris being more isolated and possibly due to spiritual interference between allomancy and feruchemy.

[HandBone69]

Not sure how accurate this is (especially since I haven't finished the book) but on page 207 of the Bands of Mourning someone says that mistings are one in a thousand which is drastically different from the one in fifty ratio. They also said that ferrings are a lot less common and that there have only been 3 known twin born crashers in history other than Waxillium Ladrian. Take all of this with a grain of salt though because it could be wildly inaccurate for all I know. 

[Weltall]

36 minutes ago, HandBone69 said:

Take all of this with a grain of salt though because it could be wildly inaccurate for all I know. 

Those numbers come from Khriss, who is obsessive about researching this kind of thing and is a huge neeeeerd.  She may be exaggerating the rarity of mistings for emphasis or be slightly off due to a lack of information (something she admits, especially given the infant mortality rate) but her numbers aren't likely to be wildly off. Certainly her number of Crashers should be correct, barring a situation where someone was born with that power combination but died before snapping or left no record of their powers.

Edited September 17, 2021 by Weltall

[Brgst13]

I find the 1 in 1000 comment very misleading.  Khriss would only know someone is a Misting if they use their powers where they are seen doing so or let people know they are a misting.  For example, Rioters, Smothers, Aluminum gnats, duraluminum, and atium mistings at the least could maintain anonymity either due to a lack of available metal or visible use of powers.  1 in 1000 seems about right for each type of misting, perhaps.