Marilyn vos Savant

Marilyn vos Savant was born Marilyn Mach on August 11, 1946, in St. Louis, Missouri, to parents Joseph Mach and Marina vos Savant.{{citation needed|date=October 2020}} Savant says one should keep premarital surnames, with sons taking their father's and daughters their mother's.{{cite news|first=Marilyn |last=vos Savant |title=Ask Marilyn |url=http://www.parade.com/articles/editions/2007/edition_11-25-2007/Ask_Marilyn |work=Parade |date=25 November 2007 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080423054835/http://www.parade.com/articles/editions/2007/edition_11-25-2007/Ask_Marilyn |archive-date=23 April 2008 }}{{cite news | first=Marilyn |last=vos Savant | title=Keeping It in the Family | url=http://parade.com/39855/marilynvossavant/keeping-it-in-the-family | work=Parade | date=23 January 2008}} The word savant, meaning someone of learning, appears twice in her family: her grandmother's name was Savant; her grandfather's, vos Savant. She is of Italian, Czechoslovak,{{cite news | first=Marilyn |last=vos Savant | title=Ask Marilyn: The 'First Sandwich Generation': True Trend or Marketing Invention?| url=http://www.parade.com/10477/marilynvossavant/the-first-sandwich-generation-true-trend-or-marketing-invention/| work=Parade | date=4 May 2013 | access-date=2013-08-15}} German,{{Cite news | last = Baumgold | first = Julie | title = In the Kingdom of the Brain | magazine = New York Magazine | date = 6 February 1989 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=qugCAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA36 | publisher = New York Media, LLC }} and Austrian ancestry, being descended from the physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach.{{cite news | first=Michael |last=Vitez | title=Two of a Kind | work=The Chicago Tribune | date=12 October 1988 }}

She went to Meramec Community College and studied philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis but quit two years later to help with a family investment business. Savant moved to New York City in the 1980s to pursue a career in writing. Before starting "Ask Marilyn", she wrote the Omni I.Q. Quiz Contest for Omni, which included intelligence quotient (IQ) quizzes and expositions on intelligence and its testing.

Savant married Robert Jarvik (one of the co-developers of the Jarvik-7 artificial heart) on August 23, 1987,{{cite news |title=Love Stories We Love |url=https://parade.com/373247/parade/love-stories-we-love/ |newspaper=Parade: Entertainment, Recipes, Health, Life, Holidays |access-date=6 February 2022 |language=en |date=6 February 2015 |quote=Vos Savant and Jarvik were married Aug. 23, 1987, a year to the day after they first met, at New York's Plaza Hotel. They wore rings the groom made of gold and pyrolitic carbon, a substance used in artificial heart valves. Isaac Asimov walked the bride down the aisle; the best man was Tom Gaidosh, the seventh recipient of the Jarvik 7 artificial heart.}}{{cite news |last1=McCleary |first1=Kathleen |title=Marilyn's Rules for a Happy Marriage |url=https://parade.com/373270/kmccleary/marilyns-rules-for-a-happy-marriage/ |newspaper=Parade: Entertainment, Recipes, Health, Life, Holidays |access-date=6 February 2022 |language=en |date=11 September 2018}} and was made Chief Financial Officer of Jarvik Heart, Inc. She has served on the board of directors of the National Council on Economic Education, on the advisory boards of the National Association for Gifted Children and the National Women's History Museum,{{cite web|url=http://www.nwhm.org/about-nwhm/press/press-publicity/cyber-launch-more|title=About – National Women's History Museum – NWHM|access-date=19 February 2016}} and as a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.{{cite web|title=CSI Fellows and Staff|url=http://www.csicop.org/about/csi_fellows_and_staff/|publisher=Center for Inquiry|access-date=20 June 2012}} Toastmasters International named her one of "Five Outstanding Speakers of 1999", and in 2003 she was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from The College of New Jersey.

Savant was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records under "Highest IQ" from 1985 to 1989{{Cite news |last=Knight |first=Sam |title=Is a high IQ a burden as much as a blessing? |newspaper=Financial Times |date=10 April 2009 |url=http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/4add9230-23d5-11de-996a-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2h4SGOygh |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/dJp9A |archive-date=December 10, 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |publisher = Financial Times Ltd |access-date=7 October 2013 }} and entered the Guinness Book of World Records Hall of Fame in 1988.{{Cite web|url=https://parade.com/tag/ask-marilyn/|title=Ask Marilyn Stream|website=Parade: Entertainment, Recipes, Health, Life, Holidays|date=October 23, 2022 }} Guinness retired the "Highest IQ" category in 1990 after concluding IQ tests were too unreliable to designate a single record holder. The listing drew nationwide attention.{{Cite news | last = Knight | first = Sam | title = Is a high IQ a burden as much as a blessing? | magazine = Financial Times | date = 10 April 2009 | url = http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/4add9230-23d5-11de-996a-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1m5xleLR0 | publisher = Financial Times Ltd.}} {{Cite book |last=Castles |first=Elaine E. |title=Inventing Intelligence |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=d163_RsyW9wC |access-date=31 August 2013 |date=6 June 2012|publisher=ABC-CLIO|isbn=978-1-4408-0338-3 |page=3 |quote=And what is that makes Marilyn vos Savant so uniquely qualified to answer such questions? There is only one reason: she is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as having the highest IQ ever recorded of 228. Never mind that this record is based on a non-standardized test put out by an obscure group known as Mega, supposedly the world's most selective organization of geniuses. Ignore the fact that test scores at the extreme ends of any distribution are notoriously unreliable. . . . None of this is meant to downplay her very real accomplishments; by all accounts, vos Savant is a sensible and grounded woman, and she has won several awards for her work in the fields of education and communications. But her fame came, in the words of journalist Julie Baumgold, 'only because of the glory of that number.' (citing New York magazine 22 (1989):36–42) }}

Guinness cited vos Savant's performance on two intelligence tests, the Stanford-Binet and the Mega Test. She took the 1937 Stanford-Binet, Second Revision test at age 10: she says her first test was in September 1956 and measured her mental age at 22 years and 10 months, yielding a 228 score. This figure was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records; it is also listed in her books' biographical sections and was given by her in interviews.

The second test reported by Guinness was the Mega Test, taken in the mid-1980s. The Mega Test yields IQ standard scores obtained by multiplying the subject's normalized z-score, or the rarity of the raw test score, by a constant standard deviation and adding the product to 100, with Savant's raw score reported by Hoeflin to be 46 out of a possible 48, with a 5.4 z-score, and a standard deviation of 16, arriving at a 186 IQ. The Mega Test has been criticized by professional psychologists as improperly designed and scored, "nothing short of number pulverization".{{cite book |first=Roger D. |last=Carlson | editor-first=Daniel J. |editor-last=Keyser |editor2-first=Richard C. |editor2-last=Sweetland | title=Test Critiques Test Critique: The Mega Test |edition=Volume VIII |publisher =PRO-ED | pages=431–435 | isbn=0-89079-254-2

|year=1991 |quote=Although the approach that Hoeflin takes is interesting, it violates good psychometric principles by overinterpreting the weak data of a self-selected sample.}}

Savant sees IQ tests as measurements of a variety of mental abilities and thinks intelligence entails so many factors that "attempts to measure it are useless".{{cite news |first=Marilyn |last=vos Savant |title=Ask Marilyn: Are Men Smarter Than Women? |url=http://www.parade.com/articles/editions/2005/edition_07-17-2005/featured_0 |work=Parade |date=17 July 2005 |access-date=2008-02-25 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071011225653/http://www.parade.com/articles/editions/2005/edition_07-17-2005/featured_0 |archive-date=October 11, 2007 }}

She has held memberships with the high-IQ societies Mensa International and the Mega Society.{{cite news | last=Thompson|first= D. | title=Marilyn's Most Vital Statistic | work=The Courier-Mail | date=5 July 1986 }}

Following her listing in the 1986 Guinness Book of World Records, Parade ran a profile of her along with a selection of questions from Parade readers and her answers. Parade continued to get questions, so "Ask Marilyn" was made.

She used her column to answer questions on many chiefly academic subjects; solve logical, mathematical, or vocabulary puzzles posed by readers; answer requests for advice with logic; and give self-devised quizzes and puzzles. Aside from the weekly printed column, "Ask Marilyn" was a daily online column that added to the printed version by resolving controversial answers, correcting mistakes, expanding answers, reposting previous answers, and solving additional questions. No new columns have been published online since October 30, 2022.{{cite news |url=https://parade.com/ask-marilyn/ |title=Ask Marilyn column archive on Parade Magazine |website=parade.com}}

Three of her books (Ask Marilyn, More Marilyn, and Of Course, I'm for Monogamy) are compilations of questions and answers from "Ask Marilyn". The Power of Logical Thinking includes many questions and answers from the column.

{{Main|Monty Hall problem}}

Savant was asked the following question in her September 9, 1990, column:{{cite web|url=http://www.marilynvossavant.com/articles/gameshow.html|title=Game Show Problem|last=vos Savant|first=Marilyn|publisher=marilynvossavant.com|access-date=2010-08-07|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100310140547/http://www.marilynvossavant.com/articles/gameshow.html|archive-date=2010-03-10|url-status=dead}}

{{blockquote|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 called the Monty Hall problem due to its resembling scenarios on the game show Let's Make a Deal, hosted by Monty Hall. It was a known logic problem before it was used in "Ask Marilyn". She said the selection should be switched to door #2 because it has a {{frac|2|3}} probability of success, while door #1 has just {{frac|1|3}}. To summarize, {{frac|2|3}} of the time the opened door #3 will indicate the location of the door with the car (the door you had not picked and the one not opened by the host). Only {{frac|1|3}} of the time will the opened door #3 mislead you into changing from the winning door to a losing door. These probabilities assume you change your choice each time door #3 is opened, and that the host always opens a door with a goat. This response provoked letters from thousands of readers, nearly all arguing doors #1 and #2 each have an equal chance of success. A follow-up column reaffirming her position served only to intensify the debate and soon became a feature article on the front page of The New York Times. Parade received around 10,000 letters from readers who thought that her workings were incorrect.{{cite news | last=Tierney|first= John |author-link=John Tierney (journalist)| title=Behind Monty Hall's Doors: Puzzle, Debate and Answer? | url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CEFDD1E3FF932A15754C0A967958260 | work=The New York Times | date=21 July 1991 | access-date=2008-08-07}}

Under the "standard" version of the problem, the host always opens a losing door and offers a switch. In the standard version, Savant's answer is correct. However, the statement of the problem as posed in her column is ambiguous.Krauss, Stefan and Wang, X. T. (2003). "The Psychology of the Monty Hall Problem: Discovering Psychological Mechanisms for Solving a Tenacious Brain Teaser", Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 132(1). Retrieved from {{cite web |url=http://www.usd.edu/~xtwang/Papers/MontyHallPaper.pdf |title=MontyHallPaper.pdf |access-date=2009-05-30 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090530100031/http://www.usd.edu/~xtwang/Papers/MontyHallPaper.pdf |archive-date=2009-05-30 }} The answer depends on what strategy the host is following. If the host operates under a strategy of offering a switch only if the initial guess is correct, it would clearly be disadvantageous to accept the offer. If the host merely selects a door at random, the question is likewise very different from the standard version. Savant addressed these issues by writing the following 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."{{cite news | title=Game Show Problem | url=http://www.marilynvossavant.com/articles/gameshow.html | work=marilynvossavant.com | access-date=2008-06-02 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100310140547/http://www.marilynvossavant.com/articles/gameshow.html | archive-date=2010-03-10 | url-status=dead }}

She expounded on her reasoning in a second follow-up and called on schoolteachers to show the problem to classes. In her final column on the problem, she gave the results of more than 1,000 school experiments. Most respondents now agree with her original solution, with half of the published letters declaring their authors had changed their minds.{{cite news | first=Marilyn |last=vos Savant | title=Ask Marilyn | url=https://archive.org/details/askmarilynbestof00voss | url-access=registration | work=Parade | year=1992 }}

{{Main|Boy or Girl paradox}}

Like the Monty Hall problem, the "two boys" or "second-sibling" problem predates Ask Marilyn, but generated controversy in the column,The problem appeared in Ask Marilyn on October 13, 1991 with a follow-up on January 5, 1992 (initially involving two baby beagles instead of two children), and then on May 26, 1996, with follow-ups on December 1, 1996, March 30, 1997, July 20, 1997, and October 19, 1997. first appearing there in 1991–1992 in the context of baby beagles:

{{blockquote|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?}}

When Savant replied "one out of three", readers{{cite book|title=The Power of Logical Thinking|author=vos Savant, Marilyn|year=1996|location=New York|publisher=St. Martin's Press|isbn=9780312156275|oclc=255578248|pages=[https://archive.org/details/poweroflogicalth00voss/page/19 19]–21|url=https://archive.org/details/poweroflogicalth00voss|url-access=registration|access-date=September 1, 2016}} wrote the odds were 50–50. In a follow-up, she defended her answer, saying, "If we could shake a pair of puppies out of a cup the way we do dice, there are four ways they could land", in three of which at least one is male, but in only one of which none are male.

The confusion arises here because the bather is not asked if the puppy he is holding is a male, but rather if either is a male. If the puppies are labeled (A and B), each has a 50% chance of being male independently. This independence is restricted when at least A or B is male. Now, if A is not male, B must be male, and if B is not male, A must be male. This restriction is introduced by the way the question is structured and is easily overlooked{{spaced ndash}}misleading people to the erroneous answer of 50%. See Boy or Girl paradox for solution details.

The problem re-emerged in 1996–97 with two cases juxtaposed:

{{blockquote|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?}}

Savant agreed with the teacher, saying the chances were only 1 out of 3 that the woman had two boys, but 1 out of 2 the man had two boys. Readers argued for 1 out of 2 in both cases, prompting follow-ups. Finally, she began a survey, asking female readers with exactly two children, at least one of them male, to give the sex of both children. Of the 17,946 women who responded, 35.9%, about 1 in 3, had two boys.{{cite journal |journal=Human Biology |title=The Most Widely Publicized Gender Problem in Human Genetics |last1=Stansfield |first1=William D. |last2=Carlton |first2=Matthew A. |date=February 2009 |volume=81 |issue=1 |pages=3–11 |doi=10.3378/027.081.0101 |pmid=19589015 |s2cid=29611617 |url=http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/humbiol/vol81/iss1/1/ |access-date=2013-04-07 |quote=Some readers doubted her 1/3 solution, so she asked for data from her women readers "with two children (no more), at least one of which is a boy (either child or both of them)." She got 17,946 responses by letters and e-mails. Without reporting the sex ratio in the sample, she says about 35.9% of respondents ("about 1 in 3") said they have two boys.}}

A few months after Andrew Wiles said he had proved Fermat's Last Theorem, Savant published the book The World's Most Famous Math Problem (October 1993),Fermat's Last Theorem and Wiles' proof were discussed in her Parade column of November 21, 1993, which introduced the book. which surveys the history of Fermat's Last Theorem as well as other mathematical problems. Reviewers questioned her criticism of Wiles' proof, asking whether it was based on a correct understanding of mathematical induction, proof by contradiction, and imaginary numbers.{{cite journal | last1=Boston | first1=Nigel | last2=Granville|first2= Andrew | title=Review of The World's Most Famous Math Problem | journal=American Mathematical Monthly | volume=102 | issue=5 | pages=470–473 | doi= 10.2307/2975048|date=May 1995 | url=http://www.dms.umontreal.ca/~andrew/PDF/VS.pdf | format=.PDF | access-date=2008-02-25 | jstor=2975048 | publisher=The American Mathematical Monthly, Vol. 102, No. 5}}

Especially contested was Savant's statement that Wiles' proof should be rejected for its use of non-Euclidean geometry. Savant stated that because "the chain of proof is based in hyperbolic (Lobachevskian) geometry", and because squaring the circle is seen as a "famous impossibility" despite being 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."

Specialists{{who|date=March 2022}} flagged discrepancies between the two cases, distinguishing the use of hyperbolic geometry as a tool for proving Fermat's Last Theorem from its use as a setting for squaring the circle: squaring the circle in hyperbolic geometry is a different problem from that of squaring it in Euclidean geometry, whereas Fermat's Last Theorem is not inherently geometry specific. Savant was criticized for rejecting hyperbolic geometry as a satisfactory basis for Wiles' proof, with critics pointing out that axiomatic set theory (rather than Euclidean geometry) is now the accepted foundation of mathematical proofs and that set theory is sufficiently robust to encompass both Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry as well as adding numbers.{{citation needed|date=March 2022}}

Savant retracted the argument in a July 1995 addendum, saying she saw the theorem as "an intellectual challenge{{spaced ndash}}'to find another proof using only tools available to Fermat in the 17th century.{{'"}} However, Wiles' original proof, presented in 1993, was found to contain an error during the peer review process, necessitating a subsequent correction by Wiles and Richard Taylor, which ultimately led to the acceptance of the proof in 1994.

The book came with a glowing introduction by Martin Gardner, which had been based on an earlier draft of the book that did not contain any of the contentious views.

• 1985 – Omni I.Q. Quiz Contest
• 1990 – Brain Building: Exercising Yourself Smarter (co-written with Leonore Fleischer)
• 1992 – Ask Marilyn: Answers to America's Most Frequently Asked Questions
• 1993 – The World's Most Famous Math Problem: The Proof of Fermat's Last Theorem and Other Mathematical Mysteries
• 1994 – More Marilyn: Some Like It Bright!
• 1994 – "I've Forgotten Everything I Learned in School!": A Refresher Course to Help You Reclaim Your Education
• 1996 – Of Course I'm for Monogamy: I'm Also for Everlasting Peace and an End to Taxes
• 1996 – The Power of Logical Thinking: Easy Lessons in the Art of Reasoning...and Hard Facts about Its Absence in Our Lives
• 2000 – The Art of Spelling: The Madness and the Method
• 2002 – Growing Up: A Classic American Childhood

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• {{cite web |url= http://www.marilynvossavant.com |title= Official website |url-status= dead |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20181101023719/http://marilynvossavant.com |archive-date= Nov 1, 2018}}
• {{cite web |url= https://parade.com/ask-marilyn/ |title= Ask Marilyn |date= October 30, 2022 |publisher= Parade }}
• {{Muckrack}}

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{{High IQ|state=collapsed}}

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Category:1946 births

Category:Living people

Category:American columnists

Category:American people of Austrian descent

Category:American people of Czech descent

Category:American people of German descent

Category:American people of Italian descent

Category:American self-help writers

Category:American women columnists

Category:American women dramatists and playwrights

Category:American women non-fiction writers

Category:Mensans

Category:St. Louis Community College alumni

Category:Washington University in St. Louis alumni

Category:World record holders

Category:Writers from St. Louis