Marilyn vos Savant (born Marilyn Mach on August 11, 1946) is an American magazine columnist, author, lecturer and playwright who rose to fame through her listing in the Guinness Book of World Records under "Highest IQ." Since 1986 she has written Ask Marilyn, a Sunday column in Parade magazine in which she answers questions from readers on a variety of subjects. is the 223rd day of the year (224th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1946 (MCMXLVI) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display full 1946 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... The Guinness Book of Records (or in recent editions Guinness World Records, and in previous US editions Guinness Book of World Records) is a book published annually, containing an internationally recognized collection of superlatives: both in terms of human achievement and the extrema of the natural world. ... PARADE is a magazine, distributed as a Sunday supplement in hundreds of newspapers in the United States. ...

Biography

Born in St. Louis to Mary vos Savant and Joseph Mach, vos Savant opposes the tradition of children taking their father's surname, instead using her mother's maiden name. She is of Austrian ancestry.^{[citation needed]} She attended Washington University, but dropped out to pursue a career in writing and investing. Nickname: Location in the state of Missouri Coordinates: , Country United States State Missouri County Independent City Government  - Mayor Francis G. Slay (D) Area  - City  66. ... A family name, or surname, is that part of a persons name that indicates to what family he or she belongs. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards and appeal to a wider international audience, this article may require cleanup. ... Washington University in St. ...

Marilyn's listing in the 1986 Guinness Book of World Records brought her widespread media attention. Among the periodicals profiling her was Parade, which followed its article with a selection of questions and her answers to them, the popularity of which launched a regular question-and-answer column, Ask Marilyn. In the column she solves mathematical and logical puzzles and answers questions on a wide range of subjects, including philosophy, physics, politics, education, and human nature, as well as responding to more traditional requests for personal advice. The column has also provided a basis for many of her books. Year 1986 (MCMLXXXVI) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link displays 1986 Gregorian calendar). ...

Vos Savant lives in New York City with her husband, artificial-heart pioneer Robert Jarvik, whom she married in August 1987. She has two children by the first of her two previous marriages. She is the Chief Financial Officer of Jarvik Heart, and assists her husband with cardiovascular disease research and prevention. She has also served on the Board of Directors of the National Council on Economic Education and on the Advisory Boards of the National Association for Gifted Children and the National Women's History Museum, the last of which gave her a "Women Making History" award in 1998 "for her contribution to changing stereotypes about women." She was named by Toastmasters International as one of the "Five Outstanding Speakers of 1999," and in 2003 received an honorary doctorate of letters from The College of New Jersey. New York, New York and NYC redirect here. ... An AbioCor artificial heart “Barney Clark” redirects here. ... Robert Kiffler Jarvik (born 11 May 1946) is an American scientist known for the Jarvik-7 artificial heart. ... The Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of a company or public agency is the corporate officer primarily responsible for managing the financial risks of the business or agency. ... Cardiovascular disease refers to the class of diseases that involve the heart and/or blood vessels (arteries and veins). ... In relation to a company, a director is an officer (that is, someone who works for the company) charged with the conduct and management of its affairs. ... The National Council on Economic Education (NCEE) is a nationwide network that leads in promoting economic literacy with students and their teachers. ... The National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) is an association in the United Kingdom for gifted and talented children, and their parents. ... Toastmasters International (TI) is a nonprofit educational organization that operates clubs worldwide for the purpose of helping members improve their communication, public speaking and leadership skills. ... An honorary degree (Latin: honoris causa ad gradum, not to be confused with an honors degree) is an academic degree awarded to an individual as a decoration, rather than as the result of matriculating and studying for several years. ... The College of New Jersey (TCNJ), is a four-year public institution located in Ewing Township, New Jersey, a northern suburb of Trenton. ...

IQ

It is generally acknowledged that Marilyn vos Savant has an extremely high IQ, and she has belonged to Mensa, Prometheus, and other high-IQ societies (Thompson 1986). However, there is much confusion over its actual value, with different data and calculations yielding different numbers: 167+, 186, 218, 228, and 230. These will be examined below, but the measurement of extremely high IQs is an inexact science, subject to problems including small sample sizes (because so few people have IQs at this level), ceiling bumping (because many tests are not designed to measure such high IQs), and a fat tail (because there seem to be more high IQs than a normal distribution would predict), as well as to the controversy over IQ in general. IQ redirects here; for other uses of that term, see IQ (disambiguation). ... Mensa is the largest, oldest, and best-known high-IQ society in the world. ... The Prometheus Society is a high IQ society. ... A high IQ society is an organization that limits membership to people who are within a certain high percentile of Intelligence quotient (IQ) test results, theoretically representing the most intelligent people in the world. ... A sample is that part of a population which is actually observed. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Long-range dependency. ... The normal distribution, also called the Gaussian distribution, is an important family of continuous probability distributions, applicable in many fields. ... IQ tests are designed to give approximately this Gaussian distribution. ...

Vos Savant was listed in the 1986 to 1989 editions of the Guinness Book of World Records under "Highest IQ." Subsequent editions do not include this category, and her column now reports that she is listed in the Guinness Hall of Fame. The book mentioned her performance on two intelligence tests: the Stanford-Binet (taken when she was a child) and the Mega Test (taken when she was an adult). The modern field of intelligence testing began with the Stanford-Binet IQ test. ...

Her Stanford-Binet score is discussed in a 1989 New York magazine article by Julie Baumgold (Baumgold 1989). Vos Savant took the Stanford-Binet when she was ten years old; this was the Second Edition of the test, published in 1937. The Stanford-Binet at that time yielded ratio IQs: scores obtained by dividing mental age (as assessed by the test) by chronological age, and multiplying by 100. Vos Savant says she first took the test in September 1956, at the age of 10 years and 0 months, and achieved the ceiling mental age of 22 years and 10 months, yielding an IQ of 228. This was the score listed by Guinness, this is the score she gives in interviews, and this is the score shown in the "About the Author" section of her books. Rounding it up produces the value of 230 which sometimes appears. This article or section needs a complete rewrite for the reasons listed on the talk page. ...

The figure of 167+ comes from a school record cited by Baumgold indicating that vos Savant took the Stanford-Binet in March 1957, at the age of 10 years and 8 months, and achieved a mental age of "17-10+" (meaning at least 17 years and 10 months). It is unclear how the recorded chronological age was derived; dates in March are six or seven months from her August birthday, not eight. It is also unclear how this record relates to the account given in the previous paragraph. The Stanford-Binet at that time had two forms (Form L and Form M), so one possibility is that Marilyn took the test twice.

The figure of 218 was informally derived by test-designer Ronald K. Hoeflin, using a chronological age of 10 years and 6 months, and a mental age of 22 years and 11 months. This figure seems to have no obvious rationale. The ceiling of the Second Edition of the Stanford-Binet was 22 years and 10 months, not 11 months (Terman 1937), and a chronological age of 10 years and 6 months corresponds neither to the age in Marilyn's account nor to the age in the school record cited by Baumgold (although it could fit a March test date). Ronald K. Hoeflin is a philosopher, creator of the Mega[1][2][3] and Titan[4] intelligence tests, and founder of several high-IQ societies; the Top One Percent Society, the One-in-a-Thousand Society, the Prometheus Society, the Epimetheus Society, the Mega Society, and the Omega Society. ...

The second intelligence test mentioned by Guinness is the Mega Test, designed by Hoeflin and taken by vos Savant as an adult in the mid-1980s. The Mega Test yields deviation IQs: scores obtained by multiplying the testee's normalized z-score (the rarity of their raw score on the test) by a constant standard deviation (in this case 16) and then adding 100. Marilyn's raw score was 46 out of 48, corresponding in the latest norming of the test to a z-score of 5.4 and therefore an IQ of 186, a percentile of 99.999997, and a rarity of 1 in 30,000,000 (Hoeflin 1989). In statistics, a standard score (z) is a dimensionless quantity derived by subtracting the sample mean from an individual (raw) score and then dividing the difference by the sample standard deviation: The quantity z represents the number of standard deviations between the raw score and the mean; it is negative... In statistics and data analysis, a raw score is an original datum that has not been transformed – for example, the original result obtained by a student on a test (i. ... In probability and statistics, the standard deviation of a probability distribution, random variable, or population or multiset of values is a measure of the spread of its values. ... // A percentile is the value of a variable below which a certain percent of observations fall. ...

Assertions that vos Savant's IQ dropped from 228 as a child to 186 as an adult are confused: the two numbers represent different types of IQ. For the upper half of the population, ratio IQs seem to follow a log-normal distribution, with a standard deviation of 0.15 for the natural logarithm of the ratio of mental age to chronological age (Scoville). Consequently, vos Savant's Stanford-Binet ratio IQ of 228 corresponds to a deviation IQ of 188, and her Mega Test deviation IQ of 186 corresponds to a ratio IQ of 224. In probability and statistics, the log-normal distribution is the probability distribution of any random variable whose logarithm is normally distributed. ... The natural logarithm, formerly known as the hyperbolic logarithm, is the logarithm to the base e, where e is equal to 2. ...

It is safe to say that Marilyn has one of the highest IQs tested and recorded. More extravagant claims—that she is the smartest person in the world (Schmich 1985), or is more or less intelligent than such-and-such a child prodigy, historical genius, or famous intellectual—should be treated cautiously. Marilyn herself values IQ tests as measurements of a variety of mental abilities, but believes that intelligence itself involves so many factors that "attempts to measure it are useless" (vos Savant, 2005). A child prodigy is someone who is a master of one or more skills or arts at an early age. ...

The Monty Hall problem

Main article: Monty Hall problem

Perhaps the most famous event involving Marilyn vos Savant began with the following question in her 9 September 1990 column: The Monty Hall problem is a puzzle involving probability, loosely based on the American game show Lets Make a Deal. ... is the 252nd day of the year (253rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1990 (MCMXC) was a common year starting on Monday (link displays the 1990 Gregorian calendar). ...

"Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors. Behind one door is a car, 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?"
—Craig F. Whitaker, Columbia, Maryland The People Tree statue has become a symbol of Columbia, Maryland. ...

This question, named "the Monty Hall problem" due to its resemblance to situations on the game show Let's Make a Deal, existed before Marilyn addressed it, but was brought to nationwide attention by her column. Marilyn's answer, that you should switch because door #2 has a 2/3 chance of winning whereas door #1 has only a 1/3 chance, provoked thousands of letters in response, nearly all arguing that she was wrong and that the doors are equally likely to win. A follow-up column affirming her answer only intensified the debate, which soon spread through the media, even reaching the front page of The New York Times. Among the ranks of her opponents were hundreds of academics with Ph.D.s, some of them professional mathematicians scolding her for propagating innumeracy. The Monty Hall problem is a puzzle involving probability, loosely based on the American game show Lets Make a Deal. ... Lets Make a Deal is a television game show which aired in various encarnations in the United States. ... The New York Times is a daily newspaper published in New York City by Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. ... Doctor of Philosophy (Ph. ... Numeracy is a term that emerged in the United Kingdom as a contraction of numerical literacy. In the United States, it is familiar to math educators and intellectuals but not in the common usage. ...

Despite the criticism, Marilyn's answer was correct under the most common interpretation of the question, in which the host always opens a losing door and offers a switch; see Monty Hall problem for details. (In other interpretations, the host may open a door at random, or offer a switch only if your initial choice was correct. The question says only that the host knows what is behind the doors, but Marilyn specified in her original answer her understanding that the host "will always avoid the one with the prize", noting in a follow-up that "[a]nything else is a different question.") The Monty Hall problem is a puzzle involving probability, loosely based on the American game show Lets Make a Deal. ...

After a second follow-up in which Marilyn explained in more depth her reasoning and the conditions on which it was based, many readers, including academics who had previously argued against her, wrote to admit that she was right. She also called on school teachers across America to simulate the problem in their math classes. In a final column, she announced the results: out of more than a thousand schools which had performed the experiment, nearly 100% had found that it pays to switch. A majority of readers now agreed with her answer, and half of those whose letters had been published wrote to retract their arguments.

Fermat's last theorem

Less favorable to Marilyn was the outcome of the controversy following the publication of her book The World's Most Famous Math Problem in November 1993, a few months after the announcement by Andrew Wiles that he had proved Fermat's Last Theorem. The book, which surveys the history of the theorem, drew criticism for its discontent with Wiles' proof; Marilyn was accused in making her case with misunderstanding mathematical induction, proof by contradiction, and imaginary numbers (cf. Boston & Granville, 1995). Especially contested was her view that Wiles' proof should be rejected for its use of non-Euclidean geometry. Specifically, she argued that because "the chain of proof is based in hyperbolic (Lobachevskian) geometry," and because squaring the circle is considered 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". For the French mathematician with work in the area of elliptic curves, see André Weil. ... Pierre de Fermats conjecture written in the margin of his copy of Arithmetica proved to be one of the most intriguing and enigmatic mathematical problems ever devised. ... Mathematical induction is a method of mathematical proof typically used to establish that a given statement is true of all natural numbers. ... Reductio ad absurdum (Latin for reduction to the absurd, traceable back to the Greek ἡ εις το αδυνατον απαγωγη, reduction to the impossible, often used by Aristotle) is a type of logical argument... In mathematics, an imaginary number (or purely imaginary number) is a complex number whose square is negative or zero. ... Behavior of lines with a common perpendicular in each of the three types of geometry The term non-Euclidean geometry describes hyperbolic, elliptic and absolute geometry, which are contrasted with Euclidean geometry. ... Lines through a given point P and hyperparallel to line l. ... Squaring the circle: the areas of this square and this circle are equal. ...

Critics pointed to differences 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. She was also 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. This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ...

In a July 1995 addendum to the book, Marilyn retracts the argument, writing that she had viewed the theorem as "an intellectual challenge—'to find a proof with Fermat's tools,'" but that she is now willing to agree that there are no restrictions on the tools to be used.

Works

• 1985 - Omni I.Q. Quiz Contest
• 1990 - Brain Building: Exercising Yourself Smarter (co-written with Leonore Fleischer)
• 1992 - Ask Marilyn
• 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

In addition to her published works, Marilyn has written a collection of humorous short stories called Short Shorts, a stage play called It Was Poppa's Will, and two novels: a satire of a dozen classical civilizations in history called The Re-Creation, and a futuristic political fantasy, as yet untitled.

References

• Baumgold, Julie (6 February 1989). "In the Kingdom of the Brain". New York magazine.
• Boston, Nigel; Granville, Andrew (May 1995). "Review of The World's Most Famous Math Problem". American Mathematical Monthly 102 (1995), No. 5, 470–473.
• Hoeflin, Ronald K. (1989). "The Sixth Norming of the Mega Test".
• Schmich, Mary T. (29 September 1985). "Meet the World's Smartest Person". Chicago Tribune.
• Scoville, John. "Statistical Distribution of Childhood IQ Scores".
• Terman, Lewis M. (1937). Measuring Intelligence.
• Thompson, D. (5 July 1986). "Marilyn's Most Vital Statistic". The Courier-Mail.
• Tierney, John (21 July 1991). "Behind Monty Hall's Doors: Puzzle, Debate and Answer?" The New York Times.
• vos Savant, Marilyn (17 July 2005). "Are Men Smarter Than Women?".

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External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Marilyn vos Savant

• marilynvossavant.com official site, with a discussion forum
• Parade the latest issue of Parade, including Ask Marilyn
• Parade Archive back issues of Parade, including Ask Marilyn
• Marilyn is Wrong! criticism of Marilyn's answers
• Marilyn Is Right! praise of Marilyn's answers
• Readers for More Marilyn campaign to increase space allotted for Ask Marilyn