This woman holds the highest recorded IQ in history—an almost unbelievable 228. Higher than Einstein’s estimates, beyond Hawking, far past Musk. And yet, despite a mind that could outthink entire institutions, she once became the target of global ridicule over a question most people believed was “simple.” The truth was that she saw what millions could not.
Marilyn Vos Savant never had an ordinary childhood.
By age ten, she had devoured entire books, finished all 24 volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and displayed an intelligence so rare that testing agencies didn’t know how to measure it. She was, by every definition, exceptional.
But brilliance didn’t shield her from the biases of her time.
“No one paid much attention to me—mostly because I was a girl,” she later said. She went to public school, left university to help with the family business, and seemed destined for a quiet, overlooked life.
Everything changed in 1985.
The Guinness Book of World Records officially named her the person with the highest IQ ever recorded: 228. Overnight, she became a cultural phenomenon—appearing on magazine covers, talk shows, and eventually writing Parade Magazine’s famous “Ask Marilyn” column.
And that’s when a single question changed everything.
In 1990, she was asked the now-legendary Monty Hall Problem:
Three doors. One car. Two goats.
You pick a door. The host opens a different one, showing a goat.
Should you switch?
Marilyn said: “Yes, always switch.”
The world erupted.
Over 10,000 letters poured in—almost 1,000 from PhDs—mocking her, insulting her, and calling her wrong.
“You are the goat.”
“You blew it big.”
“Maybe women see math differently.”
But she wasn’t wrong.
The math was simple—if you didn’t let intuition fool you.
Your first pick: only a 1/3 chance of being correct.
Meaning you had a 2/3 chance of picking a goat.
When Monty removes the other goat, switching gives you the full 2/3 probability.
MIT proved it with simulations.
MythBusters proved it with experiments.
And many academics eventually apologized.
Why didn’t people see it?
Because the problem felt simple.
Because intuition overpowered logic.
Because many people reset the scenario instead of understanding how probability shifts.
Marilyn argued that our education system trains people to memorize, not think.
To follow rules, not question them.
To trust intuition, not challenge it.
For her, intelligence has been both a gift and a loneliness:
“There’s no one to ask when I don’t know something,” she said.
Her story asks us a deeper question:
Do we truly value intelligence, or do we attack what threatens our assumptions?
