Marilyn vos Savant facts for kids

Marilyn vos Savant (born Marilyn Mach on August 11, 1946) is an American writer. She is famous for having the highest recorded intelligence quotient (IQ) in the Guinness Book of Records. This record category was later removed by Guinness.

Since 1986, she has written a popular column called "Ask Marilyn" for Parade magazine. In this Sunday column, she solves puzzles and answers questions on many different topics. Her column helped make the Monty Hall problem very well-known in 1990.

About Marilyn's Life

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 their father's. The word 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. She has family roots from Italy, Czechoslovakia, Germany, and Austria. She is related to the famous physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach.

As a teenager, Marilyn worked in her father's general store. She also wrote for local newspapers using different names. She got married at 16 and divorced ten years later. Her second marriage ended when she was 35.

She attended Meramec Community College. Later, she studied philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis. However, she left after two years to help with her family's investment 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 included IQ quizzes and information about intelligence and how it's tested.

In 1987, Marilyn married Robert Jarvik. He helped create the Jarvik-7 artificial heart. She became the Chief Financial Officer of Jarvik Heart, Inc. She has also been on the boards of several important groups. These include the National Council on Economic Education and the National Association for Gifted Children. 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.

Becoming Famous and Her IQ Score

Marilyn vos Savant was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records from 1985 to 1989. She was in the "Highest IQ" category. In 1988, she entered the Guinness Book of World Records Hall of Fame. Guinness stopped this category in 1990. They decided that IQ tests were not reliable enough to name one person as the record holder. Being listed in Guinness brought her a lot of attention across the country.

Guinness mentioned her scores on two intelligence tests. These were the Stanford-Binet and the Mega Test. She took the 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. This gave her an IQ score of 228. This number was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records. It also appears in her books and in interviews she gave.

The second test Guinness reported was the Mega Test. She took this test in the mid-1980s. The Mega Test is designed to measure very high IQs. Her score on this test was reported as 46 out of 48. This resulted in an IQ of 186. Some professional psychologists have criticized the Mega Test. They said it was not designed or scored correctly.

Marilyn sees IQ tests as measuring different mental abilities. She believes that intelligence has so many parts that trying to measure it with one test is not very useful. She has been a member of high-IQ societies 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. It 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. She also creates her own quizzes and puzzles for readers. Besides the weekly printed column, "Ask Marilyn" is also an online column. The online version adds more to the printed one. It explains controversial answers, corrects mistakes, and expands on previous answers. It also reposts old answers and solves extra questions. No new online columns have been published since October 30, 2022.

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

Famous Column Questions

The Monty Hall Problem Explained

Marilyn was asked a famous question in her column on September 9, 1990. It was about a game show:

Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors. Behind one door is a car, behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say #1, and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say #3, which has a goat. He says to you, "Do you want to pick door #2?" Is it to your advantage to switch your choice of doors?

This question is known as the Monty Hall problem. It's named after the host of the game show Let's Make a Deal. This logic problem was known before it appeared in "Ask Marilyn." Marilyn said that you should always switch your choice to door #2. She explained that door #2 has a 2⁄3 chance of having the car. Door #1, which you first picked, only has a 1⁄3 chance.

To put it simply, two out of three times, the host opening door #3 (with a goat) will show you where the car is NOT. This means the car is behind the door you didn't pick and the one the host didn't open. Only one out of three times will opening door #3 make you switch from the winning door to a losing one. These chances assume the host always opens a door with a goat and always offers a switch.

Her answer caused a huge reaction. Thousands of readers wrote letters, almost all of them arguing that doors #1 and #2 had an equal chance. A follow-up column where she stuck to her answer made the debate 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 she was wrong.

In the usual version of the problem, the host always opens a losing door and offers a switch. In this case, Marilyn's answer is correct. However, the way the problem was first written in her column was a bit unclear. The correct answer depends on what the host's strategy is. Marilyn explained this in Parade magazine. She wrote, "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 more in a second follow-up column. She also asked 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. Half of the letters published said that the authors had changed their minds.

The "Two Boys" Problem

Like the Monty Hall problem, the "two boys" problem was known before "Ask Marilyn." But it also caused a lot of debate 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, but she doesn't know whether they're male, female, or a pair. You tell her that you want only a male, and she telephones the fellow who's giving them a bath. "Is at least one a male?" she asks him. "Yes!" she informs you with a smile. What is the probability that the other one is a male?

Marilyn answered "one out of three." Readers quickly wrote back, saying the chances were 50–50. In a follow-up, she defended her answer. She explained that if you could shake two puppies out of a cup like dice, there are four possible combinations: boy-boy, boy-girl, girl-boy, and girl-girl. If you know at least one is male, that rules out the girl-girl option. So, you are left with three possibilities: boy-boy, boy-girl, and girl-boy. Out of these three, only one is boy-boy. This means the chance the other one is male is 1 out of 3.

The confusion happens because the person bathing the puppies isn't asked about a specific puppy. They are asked if at least one is male. This information changes the possible outcomes.

The problem came up again in 1996–97 with two different situations:

Say that a woman and a man (who are unrelated) each have two children. We know that at least one of the woman's children is a boy and that the man's oldest child is a boy. Can you explain why the chances that the woman has two boys do not equal the chances that the man has two boys? My algebra teacher insists that the probability is greater that the man has two boys, but I think the chances may be the same. What do you think?

Marilyn agreed with the teacher. She said the chances were 1 out of 3 that the woman had two boys. But for the man, the chances were 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 say the sex of both children. Out of 17,946 women who replied, 35.9% (about 1 in 3) had two boys.

Fermat's Last Theorem Discussion

A few months after mathematician Andrew Wiles announced he had proved Fermat's Last Theorem, Marilyn vos Savant published a book. It was called The World's Most Famous Math Problem (October 1993). The book looked at the history of Fermat's Last Theorem and other math problems.

Some reviewers questioned Marilyn's criticism of Wiles' proof. They wondered if she fully understood certain math ideas. These included mathematical induction (a way to prove things for all numbers) and proof by contradiction (showing something is true by proving its opposite is false).

Marilyn stated that Wiles' proof should not be accepted because it used non-Euclidean geometry. She argued that if we reject a non-Euclidean way of "squaring the circle" (a famous impossible problem in normal geometry), then we should also reject a non-Euclidean proof of Fermat's Last Theorem.

Math experts pointed out differences between these two cases. They explained that using non-Euclidean geometry as a tool for proving Fermat's Last Theorem is different. It's not the same as using it as the setting for squaring the circle. Fermat's Last Theorem is a number problem, not specifically a geometry problem. Critics said that modern math proofs are based on axiomatic set theory, which includes both normal (Euclidean) and non-Euclidean geometry.

Marilyn later changed her mind about this argument in July 1995. She said she saw the theorem as a challenge to find a 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. He and Richard Taylor corrected it, and the proof was accepted in 1994.

The book had a very positive introduction written by Martin Gardner. However, this introduction was based on an earlier version of the book that did not include Marilyn's controversial views.

See also

In Spanish: Marilyn vos Savant para niños