Phello Everyphannie! Check out the latest statistics dump from the phan photocards survey below! It's been out for 9 days now, so here are the promised numbers. I'm not done yet, I'll be continuing work for a long while still! You can see and contribute to my list of ongoing research questions at the end of this post.
Methodology, Sample size, and Disclaimers
I'm working with a sample of 345 responses, 1196 packs, and 5987 cards in this data! (See below for why that's not divisible by 5).
If someone claimed to open Y number of packs, but their listed cards did not add up to Y*5 and no explanation was provided as to why, I assumed there was a mistake and their response was discarded. 69 responses had to be discarded for this reason :( If it's any comfort, I didn't manage to enter my own pulls correctly on the first try either :P
Please note that I'm not a statistics professional, I'm operating on the level of an AP Statistics class I took like 8 years ago, Google searches, and nerd curiosity. I'm lowkey stealing valor from the true phannies in STEM, so kind corrections are welcome!
The below percentages are not necessarily exactly the odds that were used in production, it's just based on the data I have gathered. Everything here has a margin of error and uncertainty. You can help minimize that by submitting your card pulls to the survey!
Number of Packs
The average phannie responding to my survey opened 3.47 packs. Median 2, mode 1, max 30.
Phannies who bought more packs were more likely to be plugged into the phandom enough to find this survey, probably. Special thank you to everyone meticulously logging 50+ cards here-- that can't have been quick, but I really appreciate it!
Click below to open the rest of the Day 9 report!
Card Rarity
To start us off: the Platinum Pheal accounts for 0.25% of all cards, or 1.76% of all rares in my sample. I have the odds of any random pack containing a Pheal at 1.25%.
Dan and Phil claimed that the Platinum is 1% of all rares in the most recent Patreon livestream, and I do believe that's the real odds-- less than 1% off seems like a reasonable margin of error. It's also entirely possible that people with Pheals are more likely than Pheal-less losers like me to want to brag about their cards on a survey, which would introduce some sampling bias. Keep this in mind when looking at the rest of the results :)
Dan and Phil common cards are equally likely this time around, but slighty less common than Phan common cards.
Rare cards make up 14.2% of the cards in the sample, and commons are 85.8%.
I do believe it's possible to get more than 1 rare card in a single 5 card pack (have had a couple of reports of that happening), but it's an unlikely event. If you have footage of yourself opening such a pack and are willing to share, please let me know! I'm trying to confirm the existence of such packs and make sure that my survey respondents aren't pranking me. I got exactly 1 rare in my 5 packs and secretly did all of this just to complain about my lack of card riches, surely people with such great luck are joking.
Errors
Manufacturer errors seem to be on the side of Phannies! 8 people reported getting 6 cards in a pack, while only 1 person reported getting 4 cards in a pack. In total, less than 1% of packs seem to have a quantity error.
Even better, 7 of the 8 of people that got 6 cards in a pack report that the error pack contained a duplicate holo selfie! (i.e. two wedding selfie cards or two vacation 2025 selfie cards)
Individual Card Odds
Overall, your odds of getting any particular Dan/Phil/Phan common card are about the same as any other Dan/Phil/Phan card within its group. The variance here looks pretty normal, and I don't think it represents an actual difference in likelihood of you getting, say, a Catboy Dan vs a Bunny Dan.
The only one that stands out to me here is the one with Dan bare shoulderedly clutching some kind of fabric to his chest, which I nicknamed "it's giving princess Diana". Also the Precious Baby Angels Duo, maybe? That one seems more normal than the Princess Dan card, but still a little low relative to other Phan cards.
The fact that there's no similarly less-common Phil card makes me suspect this is my fault, somehow. Is it a methodology error? Formula mistake somewhere in my spreadsheet? Entirely possible. I've checked everything I can, but the princess card count remains stubbornly 2.3 standard deviations from the mean. It's further away than any other card and, to me, within the realm of "weird outlier". If anyone better at statistics wants to take a crack at this or provide context, let me know in the replies and I'll give you raw numbers to work with!
There are much fewer rares to work with, both in terms of unique cards and number reported, so I'm less concerned about discrepancies here. It seems likely that a Phil clear is as rare as Dan clear, and the same is true within each of the other rare groups. Smaller sample sizes on these, though, remember that.
Questions still to answer:
I started collecting data on which shop people ordered their cards from a few days ago. I really should have done so from the beginning! When I have a little more data to work with, I want to see if there are any differences based on where the cards came from.
How diminishing are the returns in buying more and more packs? How many packs would you need, on average, to complete a 55 card set?
I want to give out luck superlatives and highlight some interesting pulls!
There is so much bullshit I could be doing with pivot tables here. Just you wait.
Send me your questions! I'll look into them for you :)
Please continue to submit your photocard pulls as they arrive! I'm having loads of fun with this, and with your help we can get even more accurate numbers.
You can keep track of updates and my shitposts about the project by checking out the #photocard survey tag on my blog.
I've been thinking this over a lot over the past few weeks thinking of how to word this without making people think I hate dnp and the team they have behind the scenes, (I don't for the record, I appreciate the content they help with); there are things that dnp need to do better about and I want to talking about what they are in public, in hopes others feel the same and express their feelings, as we deserve good quality and clarity on things.
Not good communication
Since the patreon, part of the lure of the paid tiers (mainly pham) was the merch and the exclusive perks (extra videos etc); since the launch of the patreon, we've not had a single exclusive merch drop; We've also not had an update for the phounding cards other than the broad ' end of February - beginning of march'. I understand that dnp arent in control of merch production* (edit - I've been informed by @phodcast that actually they are in charge of production of merch, thank you for correcting me) delays can happen, but communicating that to us would be nice as we are spending our money for this plastic, and considering the climate of the world we live in, that isnt cheap.
The perks
For the two paid tiers (Phriends & Pham) , we have perks (which obviously happens as we're directly supporting them). These perks are;
Phriends
- bts vlogs & making of posts
- Extras / deleted scenes of videos
- uncensored and ad free podcast episodes
- 15mins bonus yap
- submit questions for monthly Q&A
Pham
- Exclusive merch releases
- Name in credits (random)
- Extras opportunities for audiences submissions
- Pham exclusive after parties
- Philm club
Things we havent been told about are;
Merch updates and 'Extra opportunities' in the pham tier.
I'm sure most of us have been giving them the benefit of the doubt as this is a 'new' thing for them (the patreon) but no new or mention of exclusive merch since it being put in the bio for the pham tier itself.
The main issue most of us have is the brief mention of 'testing' out uncensored version of the podcast on YouTube for free when its a perk for Paying members; I personally had an issue with paying for uncensored versions to begin with as I dont think it should be something we have to pay for but that isnt the focus currently. This is currently a paid perk and theyre mentioning making it free , (they mentioned this during the bonus yap (the video clip is attached that mentions this) âŹïž
But they havent communicated with us if or when this is happening and that isn't okay; yeah, you're busy but we need clear and straightforward communication so we know if we want to continue paying for a perk that isn't really a exclusive perk anymore, if this is what theyre going to be doing moving forward (they havent clarified if theyre going to do this or not, as an experiment or permanent).
I probably have more to say but my brain is currently not working well and I've not public done something like this before so I think the stress and anxiety is getting to me when drafting this; if I've said anything incorrect, please correct me nicely in the comments, a reminder that I'm just a person and make mistakes.
All of this is just what I've observed in phan spaces and I'm not the only.
Thank you for reading, feel free to correct me in the comments if I've been misinformed / got something wrong, as at the end of the day, I am just a human trying to express their opinion.
Can Americans please not bring Irish Gaelic names into white names discourse?
Irish is the native language of Irish people. Itâs an ancient language that is on the brink of extinction as a direct result of colonialism and cultural and physical genocide.
Names like Saoirse (freedom), Ăine (radiant), Aoife (beautiful) etc are traditional Irish names. Theyâre spelt âfunnyâ because Irish is a different language from English, and has some sounds that arenât found in the English language.
Itâs not the same thing as edgy white Americans naming their kid Kathylyn instead of Kathleen to try to be different
Also it's not even called Irish Gaelic it's called Gaeilge (gayl-ga) and is its own language, a beautiful one at that, fully encourage everyone interested in language revival to try learning it because we're losing it rapidly and there's not many GaeilgeoirĂ ("gayl-gor-ee" ie: fluent speakers) left
Yesâthis happens with Hebrew names all the time, too, and itâs really frustrating. No, the name Ariel isnât just a stupid Disney reference, itâs Hebrew. Toby isnât âweird for a girl,â itâs common for Jewish girls because itâs Toiba in Yiddish. Asher isnât a âtrendy white nameââthe influencer yummy mummy fucking stole it from us (which I hate). Believe me, I absolutely loathe those trendy made-up white people names like Bryzzley and Paedon, but keep in mind that thereâs a difference between names you havenât heard of because they belong to a different culture, and names some Mormon housewife made up by adding a bunch of Ys to a random noun.Â
This is also relevant with Welsh names. Cymraeg (Welsh) is a language found in Wales that has been severely damaged by English colonialism. Currently the Welsh government have been combating the dying of this language by making Welsh language a compulsory subject in schools up until sixth form, when you can drop it. All the signs have Welsh translations and almost all radio broadcasts, announcements, and phone lines have a Welsh option.
There are villages in Wales that speak only Welsh as well, I grew up in one that was mixed language but pretty much everyone bar a few immigrant parents spoke Welsh.
A few example names are from the Mabinogion which is the Welsh book of fables and includes some of the first stories about King Arthur.
This language is dying, but it's fighting to stay alive, and a lot of White Americans don't understand the history and significance of Welsh names.
Tumblr in particular is a very America centric site due to the majority of users being American so it's understandable that this isn't common knowledge, but it is still knowledge that exists and is valuable to learn.
I can see the end as it begins - my one condition is:
say youâll remember me - standing in a nice dress, staring at the sunset.
red lips and rosy cheeks - say youâll see me again
even if itâs just in your wildest dreams.
Cheep and easy ways to find a basis for your plot.
When you have characters:
What does your character aspire to do or become? Making that aspiration really hard for them to reach.
What does your character love? Take it away from them and make them earn it back.
What does your character hate? Bind them too it and make them work to get rid of it.
When you have a world:
What is the most chaotic thing that can happen to this worldâs politics? Find the character this chaos would effect the most and see what they do about it.
What is the most dangerous thing that can happen within this magic system? Figure out who would come to stop or reverse it and see what they do.
Who is the most damaging person in this world and what are they doing? Figure out who of those they hurt might rise up and defeat them.
When you have only spite:
What story do you absolutely hate the execution of? Take the very basic concept of its plot and build it into the story you wish it produced.
What plot structure do you enjoy but wish writers would be more original with? Take it and then throw a dozen spins on it.
** Remember to mix and match for more elaborate plot structures. Carry on this format with your own tricks to digging up basic plot structures!
idk if anyone will find this useful, but this is how i go about planning my stories. i mostly write fantasy, so thatâs what this is most applicable to. but it could work with other genres too.
so thereâs three major components to a story: the characters, the plot, and the world. creating them individually is the easy part, but they all connect and affect each other in different ways. (like you canât have a character who loves peaches and eats them every day if they live a peasant in a region that doesnât grow peaches, for example.)
so i created a cheat sheet to help connect all three components together.
1) the world creates the characters.
this is related to the peach example above. the characters should be a direct result of the environment they grew up in and the environment they currently live in.
2) the characters are limited by the world.
also related to the peaches. characters canât do anything outside of what the rules of their surroundings and universe allow, such as eating peaches when theyâre not available. this also applies for magic users. they canât have unlimited magic, so keep in mind what you want out of both the characters and the world when creating magic systems.
3) the characters carry the plot.
weâve all heard it before: âbad characters canât carry a good plot. good characters can carry a bad plot.â but we all like a good plot anyway. try to make sure youâre not giving your characters too heavy or too light of a plot to carry.
4) the plot pushes the characters.
if nothing in the plot happens, your characters will remain static forever. if you struggle with plots, try starting with what character development you want to happen, then go from there.
5) the plot depends on the world.
you canât overthrow the evil government if there isnât one. think of what your world needs most and what your plot is centered around, and fit those two together.
6) the world is changed by the plot.
even if your plot is centered around something most of your world would call âinsignificantâ, the world will still experience some change from the plot. either the evil government will be gone, or maybe that one teacher is now way more careful about keeping an eye on the test key. either way, the world will be different from now on.
final note: usually people will be able to write one or two of the components with ease, but donât know where to go from there. i personally canât write plots, but thinking this way has really helped me actually make a story out of the world and characters because i looked at what i needed from what i had. i really hope this can help you too! happy writing!
tl;dr this is a cheat sheet to help anyone who struggles with writing one or two of what i consider the three major components to a story.
2087
pixelskylines
stormborns
areudirty
dailybridgerton
baratheonpilled
