I may totally disagree with your views, but that would not prompt me to claim that you lack knowledge of the series.

Conversely, for you to claim that someone who has spent a decade debating about the minutae of a series of books - rereading them countless times in the process to the point of the pages starting to fall apart - lacks knowledge of the series, is well, interesting.

I'll move past that comment, and speak to the issue at hand.

What is effective strength other than the effect that your weaves have on the world? Egwene cannot sense saidin. It is impossible for a woman to do so.

Hence, she can never "feel" Rand's raw strength. All she can ever judge, is the effect that his weaves have on her and on the world around her.

So when she feels his weaves cut her and Elayne off from the source, and see him weave a dozen other webs at the same time, she uses that effect that he can achieve with his weaves - his effective strength in other words - to estimate his strength.

That is all she can ever do, because she can never see, feel or sense in any way the raw volume of saidin that he is channeling.

She can only ever judge the effect that he is able to achieve with it. Hence, she can judge his effective strength. Similarly, that is all a man can ever judge a woman's strength on.

What she can do with the Power. Because they cannot sense the volumes being channeled by the other sex.


As a knowledgeable reader of the series, you would know that. Hence, you would know that your point is in fact a non-starter.