"From Kerene, it's a sharp drop to the next five. Five once this child and the Sanche girl reach their potential. No one has come to the Tower in a thousand years who could match me. No one to match Meilyn or Kerene in almost six hundred. A thousand years ago, there would have been fifty sisters or more who stood higher than this child. In another hundred years, though, she'll stand in the first rank"
Don't you see what this means?
This quote is proving exactly my point. The farther you go back in time, the more stronger channelers there are. Over time, strength in the Power is being eradicated from the gene pool.
The average strength today is lower than the average 1000 years ago, which was lower than the average 2000 years ago, which was lower than the average 3000 years ago.
The average of today's Bell Curve is lower than the one 3000 years ago. That's why Forsaken level channelers are off today's scale.
The Bell Curve distribution existed 3000 years ago. Just like it exists today. But these are two different Bell curves, because we are talking about two different POPULATIONS.
A curve for average body weight today would look vastly different to a curve for average body weight 3000 years ago, in the real world. Because we are talking about 2 different populations. So you cannot say that the average woman today weighs the same as the average woman 3000 years ago.
In the same way, Lanfear was indeed twice as strong as the average woman in the Age of Legends. But that average was different from the Third Age average, and therefore Lanfear is far more than twice the strength of today's average woman.
Furthermore, there is not a single mechanism that can explain why the Tower today would be under-representative of channelers of above average strength. In fact, they should be OVER-representative of channelers above average strength, because they have a selection bias towards stronger channelers. RJ said so himself.
So even if they discover only 1 channeler in 5, that would be a 20% sample of the total channeling population. But that 20% sample would have a selection bias towards above average channelers, because the 37.5% weakest channelers are automatically excluded from the sample. Hence, the average Aes Sedai would be STRONGER than the average Third Age female channeler.
That is an undeniable statistical fact.
So we know for a fact then that the average Aes Sedai is stronger than the average Third Age female. So if the average Aes Sedai is stronger than the average female, then the STRONGEST Aes Sedai (Elaida) would be vastly stronger than the average female.
Siuan today is significantly below half her former strength, yet she is still stronger than Daigian. So Daigian is significantly below half of Elaida's strength.
Yet the average strength female does not lie far above Daigian's level. We know this, because RJ stated that only 12.5% of channelers lie between Daigian and the average. Therefore, if the average strength woman is so close to Daigian, and the average woman is exactly half as strong as the strongest woman, then the undeniable statistical fact is that the strongest possible woman would lie pretty much at Elaida's level.
This clearly proves that the Third Age Bell Curve CANNOT include the+ level channelers.