I'll quote the wiki article on normal distribution/bell curve distribution just so there is no confusion on this:

Parameter ? is called the mean, and it determines the location of the peak of the density function. Point x = ? is at the same time the mean, the median and the mode of normal distribution.

Is that clear?

Now, RJ very very clearly said that all, I repeat ALL, channelers are distributed in a bell curve. Very clearly, people like Rand are not excluded from this distribution.

Therefore, if you're going to take Rand as the theoretical maximum in OP strength, and someone like Morghase as the theoretical minimum, the range of the bell curve will be from Morghase to Rand.

We have arbitrarily used strengths from 1 to 100 to designate the Morghase to Rand range. You can choose 2 to 947, for all I care, but the fact remains that no matter how you want to interpret the text, no matter how you want to curve your hand around your head to touch your nose, the mean, median and mode of this range will be the same for a bell curve distribution.

In a 1 to 100 range, 50 will have to be the median. As wiki says:

The median of a finite list of numbers can be found by arranging all the observations from lowest value to highest value and picking the middle one. If there is an even number of observations, then there is no single middle value, so one often takes the mean of the two middle values.

Thus, 50 is the median. And since the range 1-100 is distributed normally among the channeling population, the mean of the channeling population is also going to be 50. This is a mathematical truth, and there's no other possible interpretation!

Which means the average woman has an effective strength of 50, which is half of Rand's strength. This also means more women will be of this strength than any other.

Now, you have several options.

You could make the infantile argument that RJ did not have any idea what a Bell Curve was.

You can say that there are tons of Egwene level (50 according to you) channelers out there who have never been discovered, and some mysterious force prevented every single one of these women from finding their way to the Tower for a thousand years.

Or, you can admit that me and Darius are correct, that the strength of 50 reflects the strength of a strong Aes Sedai like Anaiya and that women like Egwene are much rarer and likely somewhere between 60 and 70. You can also pay attention to the very well known fact that it is harder for women to shield men and vice versa.

Me and Darius think that math and RJ's quotes should colour ou reading of the text. This seems eminently reasonable to me, but perhaps you have some explanation that will convince me to disbelieve what math and RJ tell us and instead follow your perspective on the text?