OK, the Tower AS don't fall into a bell-curve, then. - Edit 1
Before modification by BlackAdder at 18/12/2009 10:38:18 PM
That still doesn't mean that the average strength is clustered around 50.
At some point, you have to make distinctions between channellers, so, yeah, it is discontinuous range. There are only 1000 AS, but an infinite number of possible strengths.
It's possible for the mean to not be 50 and still conform to a bell curve.
Yeah, that's good, but again, there are only a finite number of channelers. It's quite possible that the Pattern chose to weave weak ones for a while, then recently spun in a lot of strong people. That does not mean that the population of channelers in RL will fall into the bell shape. Only if all the possible channelers are spun out can we say for sure that the population of RL channelers falls into a bell shape. The Wheel itself is quite capable of skewing the population.
You're assuming a discontinuous range then. That has absolutely no basis in fact. There is not one shred of proof that certain strengths between the lowest and highest strengths cannot exist, which is what you're implying by having 5 and 20 in your list, but not 10, 15, etc.
At some point, you have to make distinctions between channellers, so, yeah, it is discontinuous range. There are only 1000 AS, but an infinite number of possible strengths.
It's possible for the mean to not be 50 and still conform to a bell curve.
Yes necessarily. the mistake you're making is that you think the bell curve distribution is a hypothesis based on random statistical sampling of all channelers. In that case, it is indeed possible that you'll have no person occupying certain strength scales, which will shift the mean.
In this case however, RJ has declared that all his imaginary characters follow this law. And has given absolutely no indication that there are levels which no human can occupy between the minima and the maxima of the range.
In this case however, RJ has declared that all his imaginary characters follow this law. And has given absolutely no indication that there are levels which no human can occupy between the minima and the maxima of the range.
Yeah, that's good, but again, there are only a finite number of channelers. It's quite possible that the Pattern chose to weave weak ones for a while, then recently spun in a lot of strong people. That does not mean that the population of channelers in RL will fall into the bell shape. Only if all the possible channelers are spun out can we say for sure that the population of RL channelers falls into a bell shape. The Wheel itself is quite capable of skewing the population.