Marilyn vos Savant

Marilyn vos Savant (born 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.

Let's Make a Deal

Perhaps the most famous event involving Marilyn vos Savant began with the following question in her September 9, 1990 column.

Related Topics:
September 9 - 1990

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"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

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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.

Related Topics:
Monty Hall problem - Let's Make a Deal - The New York Times - Ph.D.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Despite this scholarly antagonism, Marilyn's answer was correct under the most common interpretation of the question; see Monty Hall problem for details. Following a second follow-up column in which she 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. Marilyn 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. After months of controversy, the furor finally subsided.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~