Before I address your points, let me state that I find it very telling that you ignore every bit of evidence I gave in my post. You don't address the Traveling issue, you don't address RJ's statement. You just reject the overall implications because they go against your list.


Yes...

Ok...


YES! Thank you for finally figuring that out. But remember, this is the average strength woman. This is absolutely not the average strength Aes Sedai. The average strength Aes Sedai is not much above Daigian, because their highest strength in a thousand years has been Cadsuane. They have had absolutely no representation of the higher echelons.


You're ignoring another major factor. Age. The Aes Sedai don't want women over 18, usually. Another factor is running away. Another is women being put away because you're a coward (either for the Accepted or AS test, which is exclusively skewed to remove stronger women. Which is why women like Reanne were thrown out).

I doubt the latter two reasons lost the AS many strong women (though the mutterings about Nicola give some doubt to this), but the age factor certainly has. How many women who're weaker than Sharina, but definitely stronger than the likes of Moiraine have been turned away because they had the misfortune of not coming to the Tower before they were 18? The reaction to Sharina, where she's around only because Egwene is Amyrlin, shows pretty clearly how very skewed the whole AS process is.

Look at Nicola too. She's stronger than all the AS except Cadsuane, but she had no idea of going to the Tower.

The vast majority of women like Nicola and Sharina would fall around the average female strength, which is around the strength of Myrelle or Sheriam. If the Tower had included all of them, its average would undoubtedly go up. But it doesn't. Instead, it adds yet another constraint! You must want to become Aes Sedai to get the chance.

These 1000 women are barely .4% of the channeling population of the Westlands. And they already have three restrictions to entering their sample. Using them to prove anything is laughable.


If they make the journey to Tar Valon.


No. People weaker than Daigian are still allowed to be Novices.

Look at this simple fact. In the past 600 years, three women went to the Tower who were stronger than Moiraine.

In the past two years, when the Tower recruited more actively, it found Egwene, Elayne, Bode, Nynaeve, Nicola and Sharina! Six women stronger than Moiraine were found in two years, but only three came to the Tower in a 600 bloody years.


Age, interest in going to the Tower, cowardice. Those aren't random exclusions. Strength is not the only criterion on which the AS choose candidates.


YES! What you're missing is that strength is not the only selection criteria for Aes Sedai.

At the worst, you have to take RJ at his word, and assume that the Pattern had something to do with only weaker women entering the Tower. But you don't even need that rationalization! Just look what happened when the Tower in exile opened its Novice book:

Egwene says they got around a 1000 fresh Novices. She also says only about 200 will be strong enough to be Aes Sedai. Leaving aside the astounding fact that the Tower added a fifth of its population in half a year, this is still a skewed sample because 80% are too weak to be AS in this 1000. There should have been 625 women capable of being AS in a truly RANDOM sampling of 1000 women, but that isn't the case here.

There seems to be a clear correlation between being weak in the Power and wanting to be Aes Sedai, which is why women like Nynaeve and Sharina are such outliers to the system. Add to this the possibility that most sparkers are stronger channelers, and 1/4th of them die and the others are rejected as wilders, and you cannot help but conclude that the Aes Sedai are an absurdly skewed sample.


Not at all. A huge proportion of them are considered to be "strong" by Aes Sedai, but the Aiel themselves seem to disparage AS strength. A woman like Aviendha is considered an outlier among the Aiel. But among the AS, even women like Moiraine are "strong".


That's four we've heard of among 6000. How do you know there aren't more?


IF she comes to the Tower and IF she isn't too old and IF she isn't a coward.


Of course Nynaeve is rare! But there should still be around 10 more of her strength. But what about the likes of Moiraine? Is she also very rare. Is she, in fact, just 5 times more common than Nynaeve (since we have five of that strength to one of Nynaeve's)? Hardly.

There should be thousands of women of Moiraine's strength in the world. The Tower has just missed them all.


RJ didn't say Aes Sedai follow a bell curve strength (impossible since they exclude 37.5% of the population anyway).

And if the levels between Verin and Moiraine are the top 37.5%, what are women like Cadsuane and Egwene? 0%?


Yet, that is exactly what we see when we get a fresh 1000 women who want to be AS. There is a downward skewing.

But what if the Aes Sedai went recruiting like the Asha'man? Are you going to argue that the average Asha'man is as strong as Verin, when Verin seems to be among the weakest AS who can Travel, whereas a huge proportion of the Asha'man can Travel? Can you seriously argue this given what we know about men and women being equal?