Marilyn Vos Savant: The Woman With The Highest Registered IQ
Intelligence is defined in different ways. That said, there seems to be a general consensus that intelligence is the ability to understand, process, produce and use information to solve problems. People usually assume that Albert Einstein is the most intelligent person who has ever been on this earth. You may be surprised to hear that this is not the case. There are some brilliant minds who surpass his intelligence. Today we will focus on just one of them, Marilyn vos Savant.
Vos Savant was classified as the most intelligent person in the world. You might then assume that she is a brilliant scientist. You’re wrong again. Keep reading to learn more about this amazing woman.
Who is Marilyn vos Savant?
Marilyn vos Savant was born on August 11, 1946 in St. Louis, Missouri. Her mother was Italian, and her father was a German descendant of the scientist Ernst Mach. Mach made important discoveries in optics, acoustics and thermodynamics. Her classmates rejected her in high school and the teachers believed that as a woman she was a waste of intelligence.
After graduating from high school, she decided to study philosophy at the University of Washington . Two years into her education, her parents forced her to leave school to work in the family’s laundry. As soon as she was financially independent, vos Savant began her career as a writer.
Her second marriage was to Dr. Robert Jarvik, a pioneer of the artificial heart “Jarvik-7”. Vos Savant took care of her husband’s finances and worked as his assistant in research and prevention of cardiovascular disease. She also worked at the National Women’s History Museum , which won her the Women Who Make History Award for her work in the fight against stereotypes of women.
To put her intelligence to the test
When vos Savant was a child, she took several IQ tests. At the age of seven, she got 127. Three years later, however, she got a full 167. Her highest score on the Stanford-Binet Intelligent Scale was 228 points. Thanks to that score, the Guinness Book of Records named her the person with the highest IQ in the world in 1986.
After that, the media began to take an interest in her story. Parade magazine was the first to publish an article with a Q&A section. The popularity of that article was the inspiration for the “Ask Marilyn” column, where she answered questions about mathematics, logic, philosophy, politics and other more “common” topics.
Her work on the column led her to write three books. Ask Marilyn: Answers to America’s Frequently Asked Questions (1992), More Marilyn: Some Like It Bright (1994) and Of Course I’m for Monogamy: I’m Also For Everlasting Peace and an End to Taxes (1996).
Marilyn solves the Monty Hall problem
In 1990, Marilyn received a letter from Craig F. Whitaker stating:
To this Marilyn replied: “Yes, you should change. The first door has a 1/3 chance of winning, but the second door has a 2/3 chance ”. She had no idea what kind of response she would get to her (correct) answer.
After she published the solution, Parade magazine began receiving thousands of letters from people who were upset about her response. Here are some of the responses:
The solution
Despite the growing pressure, vos Savant refused to change his answer. She devoted four columns to the Monty Hall problem to explain how she solved it. In the second column, she suggested a method for clarifying the probabilities. This meant posting the possible results of the game as follows:
| Door 1 | Door 2 | Door 3 | Result | |
| Game 1 | Car | Goat | Goat | Swap and loss |
| Game 2 | Goat | Car | Goat | Swap and win |
| Game 3 | Goat | Goat | Car | Swap and win |
| Game 4 | Car | Goat | Goat | Stay and win |
| Game 5 | Goat | Car | Goat | Stay and lose |
| Game 6 | Goat | Goat | Car | Stay and lose |
Here you can see that if you change doors, the probability of getting a car is 2/3. If you do not switch, the probability is only 1/3.
In the third column, she explained the diagram and the probabilities. In the fourth, she revealed that many of her readers had carried out the Monty Hall problem and now supported her solution. Even the great mathematician Paul Erdos had to ask for forgiveness after claiming that she had solved the problem incorrectly.
Marilyn vos Savant’s humility
One of the things that bothered the readers so much was not that the solution was an “attack” on common sense, but that the person who solved it in public was a woman. Many mathematicians and universities had looked at the problem and come up with the wrong answer. Once again , she had to deal with this discrimination just because she is a woman. There were (and still are, unfortunately) many people who believe that intelligence belongs exclusively to the male domain.
Despite being one of the most radiant minds in the world, vos Savant is humble. She acknowledges that she is not a great mathematician nor does she have a photographic memory. Her strength, she says, is objective analysis, decision making and problem solving. She also believes that intelligent people are not often good at that kind of thing. They tend to have a lot of training in a particular field and area of knowledge.
