Marilyn vos Savant facts for kids

Marilyn vos Savant (/ˌvɒs səˈvɑːnt/ VOSS-_-SƏ-vahnt; born Marilyn Mach; August 11, 1946) is an American writer and newspaper columnist. She was once listed in the Guinness Book of Records for having the highest recorded intelligence quotient (IQ). This category is no longer in the book. Since 1986, she has written "Ask Marilyn," a popular Sunday column in Parade magazine. In her column, she solves puzzles and answers questions on many different topics. She became very famous in 1990 for discussing the Monty Hall problem.

Who is Marilyn vos Savant?

Marilyn vos Savant was born Marilyn Mach on August 11, 1946, in St. Louis, Missouri. Her parents were Joseph Mach and Marina vos Savant. Marilyn believes that daughters should keep their mother's last name, and sons should keep their father's. The name savant means a very smart or learned person. This name appeared twice in her family: her grandmother's name was Savant, and her grandfather's was vos Savant. Her family comes from Italy, Czechoslovak, Germany, and Austria. She is also related to the famous physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach.

Marilyn went to Meramec Community College. She then studied philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis. However, she left college after two years to help with her family's business. In the 1980s, Savant moved to New York City to become a writer. Before "Ask Marilyn," she wrote the Omni I.Q. Quiz Contest for Omni magazine. This contest included intelligence quotient (IQ) quizzes and information about intelligence tests.

Savant married Robert Jarvik on August 23, 1987. Robert Jarvik (who passed away in 2025) was one of the people who helped create the Jarvik-7 artificial heart. Marilyn became the Chief Financial Officer of Jarvik Heart, Inc. She has also been part of many important groups. These include the board of directors for the National Council on Economic Education and advisory boards for the National Association for Gifted Children and the National Women's History Museum. She was also a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. In 1999, Toastmasters International named her one of "Five Outstanding Speakers." In 2003, she received an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from The College of New Jersey.

Marilyn's IQ Score and Fame

From 1985 to 1989, Marilyn vos Savant was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for having the "Highest IQ." She was even added to the Guinness Book of World Records Hall of Fame in 1988. However, in 1990, Guinness stopped the "Highest IQ" category. They decided that IQ tests were not reliable enough to name one person as the record holder. Still, her listing brought her a lot of attention across the country.

Guinness mentioned her scores on two intelligence tests: the Stanford-Binet and the Mega Test. She took the 1937 Stanford-Binet test when she was 10 years old. She said her first test was in September 1956. It showed her mental age was 22 years and 10 months, which gave her a score of 228. This score was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records and in her books.

The second test mentioned by Guinness was the Mega Test, which she took in the mid-1980s. Savant's score on this test was reported as 46 out of 48 possible points. This test is designed to measure very high intelligence.

Marilyn vos Savant believes that IQ tests measure different mental abilities. She thinks that intelligence has so many parts that trying to measure it perfectly is not very useful. She has been a member of high-IQ groups like Mensa International and the Mega Society.

"Ask Marilyn" Column

After she was listed in the 1986 Guinness Book of World Records, Parade magazine wrote an article about her. They also included some questions from readers and her answers. Parade kept getting more questions, so they decided to create the "Ask Marilyn" column.

In her column, she answers questions on many school subjects. She also solves logic, math, or vocabulary puzzles sent in by readers. Sometimes, she gives advice using logic or creates her own quizzes and puzzles. Besides the weekly column in the magazine, "Ask Marilyn" used to be an online column every day. The online version would explain controversial answers, correct mistakes, or give more details. New online columns stopped being published after October 30, 2022.

Three of her books, Ask Marilyn, More Marilyn, and Of Course, I'm for Monogamy, are collections of questions and answers from her column. Her book The Power of Logical Thinking also includes many questions and answers from "Ask Marilyn."

Famous Column Questions

The Monty Hall Problem

In her September 9, 1990, column, Marilyn was asked a famous question:

Imagine you're on a game show with three doors. Behind one door is a car, and behind the others are goats. You pick a door, let's say Door #1. The host, who knows where the car is, opens another door, say Door #3, which has a goat. Then he asks you, "Do you want to switch to Door #2?" Is it better to switch your choice of doors?

This question is known as the Monty Hall problem. It is named after the game show host Monty Hall from Let's Make a Deal. This logic problem was known before Marilyn discussed it. She said that you should switch your choice to Door #2. She explained that switching gives you a 2⁄3 (two out of three) chance of winning the car. Staying with your first choice only gives you a 1⁄3 (one out of three) chance.

Her answer caused a huge debate. Thousands of readers wrote letters, almost all of them arguing that both Door #1 and Door #2 had an equal chance of success. When she wrote another column to explain her answer, the debate grew even bigger. It even became a front-page story in The New York Times. Parade magazine received about 10,000 letters from readers who thought her answer was wrong.

Marilyn explained that her answer was correct if the host always opens a losing door and always offers a switch. She wrote in Parade magazine, "the original answer defines certain conditions, the most significant of which is that the host always opens a losing door on purpose. Anything else is a different question."

She explained her reasoning again in a third column. She also encouraged teachers to show the problem to their classes. In her final column about the problem, she shared the results of over 1,000 school experiments. Most people now agree with her original solution. About half of the letters published after these experiments said that the authors had changed their minds.

The "Two Boys" Problem

Like the Monty Hall problem, the "two boys" problem was known before it appeared in "Ask Marilyn." It caused a lot of discussion in her column. It first appeared in 1991–1992, using baby beagles as an example:

A shopkeeper says she has two new baby beagles to show you. She doesn't know if they are male, female, or one of each. You tell her you only want a male. She calls the person bathing them and asks, "Is at least one a male?" "Yes!" she tells you with a smile. What is the chance that the other one is a male?

Marilyn answered "one out of three." Many readers wrote back, saying the chances were 50–50. In a follow-up column, she defended her answer. She explained that if you could shake two puppies out of a cup like dice, there are four possible combinations:

• Male, Male
• Male, Female
• Female, Male
• Female, Female

If you know at least one is male, the "Female, Female" option is removed. This leaves three possibilities where at least one is male. Out of these three, only one has two males. So, the chance that the other one is male is one out of three.

The problem came up again in 1996–97 with a different example:

A woman and a man (who are not related) each have two children. We know that at least one of the woman's children is a boy. We also know that the man's oldest child is a boy. Can you explain why the chances that the woman has two boys are not the same as the chances that the man has two boys? My algebra teacher says the chance is greater that the man has two boys, but I think the chances might be the same. What do you think?

Marilyn agreed with the teacher. She said the chance that the woman had two boys was 1 out of 3. But the chance that the man had two boys was 1 out of 2. Readers again argued for 1 out of 2 in both cases. This led to more follow-up columns. Finally, she started a survey. She asked female readers with exactly two children, where at least one was male, to share the gender of both their children. Out of 17,946 women who responded, 35.9% (about 1 in 3) had two boys.

Fermat's Last Theorem Discussion

A few months after Andrew Wiles announced he had proven Fermat's Last Theorem, Marilyn Savant published a book called The World's Most Famous Math Problem in October 1993. This book looked at the history of Fermat's Last Theorem and other math problems. Some reviewers questioned her comments about Wiles' proof. They wondered if she fully understood certain math ideas like mathematical induction or proof by contradiction.

One point that was especially debated was Savant's idea that Wiles' proof should not be accepted because it used non-Euclidean geometry. She said that because "the chain of proof is based in hyperbolic (Lobachevskian) geometry", and because "squaring the circle" is known to be impossible in standard geometry but possible in hyperbolic geometry, then "if we reject a hyperbolic method of squaring the circle, we should also reject a hyperbolic proof of Fermat's last theorem."

Math experts pointed out differences between these two cases. They explained that using hyperbolic geometry as a tool to prove Fermat's Last Theorem is different from using it as a setting for squaring the circle. Squaring the circle in hyperbolic geometry is a different problem than in standard Euclidean geometry. However, Fermat's Last Theorem is not tied to a specific type of geometry. Critics disagreed with Savant's rejection of hyperbolic geometry for Wiles' proof. They noted that modern math proofs are based on axiomatic set theory, which includes both Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry.

Savant later changed her argument in July 1995. She said she saw the theorem as "an intellectual challenge – 'to find another proof using only tools available to Fermat in the 17th century.'" It's worth noting that Wiles' original proof, presented in 1993, was found to have a small error during review. He and Richard Taylor later corrected it, and the proof was accepted in 1994.

The book included a very positive introduction by Martin Gardner. This introduction was based on an earlier version of the book that did not contain the controversial views.

See also

In Spanish: Marilyn vos Savant para niños