# Marilyn vos Savant
**Marilyn vos Savant** (born Marilyn Mach, 1946) is an American magazine columnist, author, lecturer, and playwright best known for the "Ask Marilyn" column she has written in *Parade* since 1986 and for having been listed in the *Guinness Book of World Records* as the person with the highest recorded IQ, a score of 228 from a childhood Stanford-Binet test.[1](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/david-steenhoek-a681a69_marilyn-vos-savant-born-marilyn-mach-on-activity-7412720936854036480-KkiM) • [2](https://acisiq.com/marilyn-vos-savant-iq)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Born | Marilyn Mach, 1946, St. Louis, Missouri, to European immigrant parents[3](https://as.com/actualidad/sociedad/ni-einstein-ni-hawking-la-persona-con-mayor-iq-es-una-mujer-y-este-fue-el-acertijo-matematico-que-lo-certifica-n/) |
| Reported IQ | 228, a ratio IQ computed from a 1937 Stanford-Binet administered at age 10 in 1956, with a recorded mental age of 22 years 10 months[2](https://acisiq.com/marilyn-vos-savant-iq) • [4](https://lifescoretest.com/history/marilyn-vos-savant) |
| Mega Test score | 186, an extrapolated score on Ronald Hoeflin's mail-order adult high-range test, criticized as improperly designed and scored[2](https://acisiq.com/marilyn-vos-savant-iq) • [4](https://lifescoretest.com/history/marilyn-vos-savant) |
| Guinness listing | Listed under "Highest IQ" through 1989 and inducted into the Guinness Hall of Fame in 1988; the category was retired in 1990[4](https://lifescoretest.com/history/marilyn-vos-savant) • [1](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/david-steenhoek-a681a69_marilyn-vos-savant-born-marilyn-mach-on-activity-7412720936854036480-KkiM) |
| Column | "Ask Marilyn" in *Parade* since November 16, 1986; Numbrix puzzles since 2008[5](https://parade.com/533287/marilynvossavant/parade-columnist-marilyn-vos-savants-favorite-questions-from-the-last-30-years/) • [6](https://parade.com/author/marilynvossavant) |
| Monty Hall controversy | Her September 9, 1990 column said switching doors wins with probability 2/3; she received an estimated 10,000 dissenting letters, about 1,000 from people with PhDs, and was vindicated[7](https://www.stat.berkeley.edu/~stark/SticiGui/Text/montyHall.htm) • [8](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-almost-everyone-gets-the-monty-hall-probability-puzzle-wrong/) |
| Marriage | Married Robert Jarvik, inventor of the Jarvik-7 artificial heart, in 1987[1](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/david-steenhoek-a681a69_marilyn-vos-savant-born-marilyn-mach-on-activity-7412720936854036480-KkiM) |
## Early life and name
Vos Savant is the daughter of European immigrants who settled in St. Louis, Missouri, where she was born in 1946.[3](https://as.com/actualidad/sociedad/ni-einstein-ni-hawking-la-persona-con-mayor-iq-es-una-mujer-y-este-fue-el-acertijo-matematico-que-lo-certifica-n/) Convinced that people should take the surnames of both parents, she adopted her mother's maiden name, Savant.[3](https://as.com/actualidad/sociedad/ni-einstein-ni-hawking-la-persona-con-mayor-iq-es-una-mujer-y-este-fue-el-acertijo-matematico-que-lo-certifica-n/)
Her early adult life did not point toward public intellectual work. According to a 1989 profile in *New York* magazine cited by *The Atlantic*, she graduated 178th in her high-school class of 613, married at 16, had two children by 19, and was divorced in her 20s. She tried to study philosophy at [Washington University in St. Louis](https://www.edgepedia.org/washington-university-in-st-louis) but did not graduate, later worked in investments, and raised her sons before her public life began.[9](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/06/high-iq-intelligence-myth/683023/) • [1](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/david-steenhoek-a681a69_marilyn-vos-savant-born-marilyn-mach-on-activity-7412720936854036480-KkiM)
## The IQ scores and what they measure
Two numbers are attached to her name, and both come from scales no modern test uses. The 228 is a ratio IQ from a 1937 Stanford-Binet administered in September 1956, when she was ten: it divides mental age, recorded as 22 years and 10 months, by chronological age, and 22.8 divided by 10 gives about 228.[2](https://acisiq.com/marilyn-vos-savant-iq) • [4](https://lifescoretest.com/history/marilyn-vos-savant) The ratio formula was designed for children; David Wechsler replaced it with the deviation IQ in *The Measurement of Adult Intelligence* in 1939, and no test in use today reports a ratio score.[2](https://acisiq.com/marilyn-vos-savant-iq) Neither the 228 nor the 186 converts to a modern deviation IQ, and no current standardized test reports scores in that range.[2](https://acisiq.com/marilyn-vos-savant-iq)
**The Mega Test.** In the mid-1980s she took Ronald Hoeflin's Mega Test, a mail-order test for high-range societies, and scored 186.[2](https://acisiq.com/marilyn-vos-savant-iq) • [4](https://lifescoretest.com/history/marilyn-vos-savant) Professionals have criticized that test as improperly designed and scored.[4](https://lifescoretest.com/history/marilyn-vos-savant) Her performance qualified her for the Mega Society, which admits people said to have "one-in-a-million" intelligence.[9](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/06/high-iq-intelligence-myth/683023/)
## The Guinness record
*The Guinness Book of World Records* listed her under "Highest IQ" with the 228 score; sources differ on the start date, with one giving 1985 and another saying the category was added in 1986 and that she held the listing for three editions through 1989.[4](https://lifescoretest.com/history/marilyn-vos-savant) • [10](https://whats-your-iq.com/en/iq-of-marilyn-vos-savant) She was inducted into the Guinness Hall of Fame in 1988.[1](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/david-steenhoek-a681a69_marilyn-vos-savant-born-marilyn-mach-on-activity-7412720936854036480-KkiM)
In 1990 Guinness retired the category, conceding that no definitive ranking was possible given the limitations of, and variation among, the available tests.[9](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/06/high-iq-intelligence-myth/683023/) The retirement was a judgment about the category, not about her, and [Guinness World Records](https://www.edgepedia.org/guinness-world-records) lists no highest IQ today, so every subsequent claim to the title rests on bodies other than Guinness.[10](https://whats-your-iq.com/en/iq-of-marilyn-vos-savant)
The provenance of the record has been disputed. A 1985 [United Press International](https://www.edgepedia.org/united-press-international) report called her "the possessor of the world's highest IQ," a claim later repeated even in the *Skeptical Inquirer*, and critics have argued about the validity of her result for decades.[11](https://www.skeptic.org.uk/2026/10/from-the-archives-a-supernatural-iq-investigating-a-claim-to-an-extraordinary-iq/) • [9](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/06/high-iq-intelligence-myth/683023/) One recurring controversy is over the test date: she says she was tested at age 10, while her chart was recorded as an age of 11 years and 4 months, a discrepancy that would change the computed ratio.[12](https://winone.iqsociety.org/issues/Phenomenon_25.pdf) The test report itself is not public.[4](https://lifescoretest.com/history/marilyn-vos-savant)
## Ask Marilyn and the Monty Hall problem
**The column.** A 1986 *Parade* magazine feature drew so much reader mail that the magazine hired her, and her first "Ask Marilyn" column appeared on November 16, 1986.[5](https://parade.com/533287/marilynvossavant/parade-columnist-marilyn-vos-savants-favorite-questions-from-the-last-30-years/) • [13](https://www.riotiq.com/articles/famous-people-and-iq/who-is-marilyn-vos-savant) For 30 years and more she has answered reader questions on logic, puzzles, science, philosophy, and everyday dilemmas, and her Numbrix number puzzles launched in 2008.[6](https://parade.com/author/marilynvossavant)
**The Monty Hall problem.** In her September 9, 1990 column, a reader asked the three-door puzzle: a car sits behind one door, goats behind the others; after you pick a door, the host, who knows where the car is, opens another door to reveal a goat. Should you switch? She said yes, switching raises the odds of winning from 1/3 to 2/3.[7](https://www.stat.berkeley.edu/~stark/SticiGui/Text/montyHall.htm) • [10](https://whats-your-iq.com/en/iq-of-marilyn-vos-savant)
The response was enormous. An estimated 10,000 furious letters declared her answer wrong, including about 1,000 signed by people with PhDs.[8](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-almost-everyone-gets-the-monty-hall-probability-puzzle-wrong/) *Parade* published four columns on the subject, twice devoting an entire page to it and calling for a national math experiment, which by her account produced about 1,000 real-life probability experiments by some 50,000 students across the country.[14](https://content.toastmasters.org/image/upload/toastmaster-magazine-january-2000.pdf) *The New York Times* put the dispute on its front page on July 21, 1991, and the discussion spread internationally.[2](https://acisiq.com/marilyn-vos-savant-iq) • [14](https://content.toastmasters.org/image/upload/toastmaster-magazine-january-2000.pdf) Her answer was correct under the standard assumptions of the problem, including that the host always opens a goat door and offers the switch; academic commentators have noted that the problem as posed leaves those assumptions to be inferred, which is part of why it resists easy solution.[15](https://pub.math.leidenuniv.nl/~gillrd/essential_MHP.html) A scholarly analysis of tens of thousands of the [Monty Hall](https://www.edgepedia.org/monty-hall) letters, by Donald Granberg of the [University of Missouri](https://www.edgepedia.org/university-of-missouri), appears as an appendix in her book *The Power of Logical Thinking*.[14](https://content.toastmasters.org/image/upload/toastmaster-magazine-january-2000.pdf) She had also illustrated the logic with a million-door version: if the host, knowing where the prize is, opens every door but number 777,777, switching is obviously the right move.[3](https://as.com/actualidad/sociedad/ni-einstein-ni-hawking-la-persona-con-mayor-iq-es-una-mujer-y-este-fue-el-acertijo-matematico-que-lo-certifica-n/)
The puzzle itself was older: Steve Selvin had posed and solved a version in *The American Statistician* in 1975, and the affair's afterlife has included debates over whether her solution was stated with full conditional rigor.[3](https://as.com/actualidad/sociedad/ni-einstein-ni-hawking-la-persona-con-mayor-iq-es-una-mujer-y-este-fue-el-acertijo-matematico-que-lo-certifica-n/) • [15](https://pub.math.leidenuniv.nl/~gillrd/essential_MHP.html)
## Books and later career
She has written fiction and nonfiction, including the column compilations *Ask Marilyn* (St. Martin's Press, 1994) and *More Marilyn*, *The Power of Logical Thinking* on reasoning and flaws in public discourse, *The Omni I.Q. Quiz Contest*, *Brain Building in Just 12 Weeks*, and *The World's Most Famous Math Problem*, a book on the proof of [Fermat's Last Theorem](https://www.edgepedia.org/fermats-last-theorem).[1](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/david-steenhoek-a681a69_marilyn-vos-savant-born-marilyn-mach-on-activity-7412720936854036480-KkiM) • [16](https://booksrun.com/9780312951818-ask-marilyn) • [9](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/06/high-iq-intelligence-myth/683023/)
The Guinness publicity brought her together with her third husband, Robert Jarvik, developer of the Jarvik-7 artificial heart; he tracked her down after seeing her on an airline magazine cover, and they married in 1987 and lived in New York.[9](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/06/high-iq-intelligence-myth/683023/) • [17](https://us.macmillan.com/author/marilynvossavant/)
On the meaning of her own record, she has said that IQ tests measure specific abilities but that true intelligence involves too many factors to quantify precisely.[1](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/david-steenhoek-a681a69_marilyn-vos-savant-born-marilyn-mach-on-activity-7412720936854036480-KkiM)
## References
1. [David Steenhoek, Marilyn vos Savant summary, LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/david-steenhoek-a681a69_marilyn-vos-savant-born-marilyn-mach-on-activity-7412720936854036480-KkiM)
2. [Marilyn vos Savant IQ: Is the 228 Real? Explained, ACIS](https://acisiq.com/marilyn-vos-savant-iq)
3. [Ni Einstein ni Hawking, la persona con mayor IQ es una mujer, Diario AS](https://as.com/actualidad/sociedad/ni-einstein-ni-hawking-la-persona-con-mayor-iq-es-una-mujer-y-este-fue-el-acertijo-matematico-que-lo-certifica-n/)
4. [Marilyn vos Savant IQ: 228? What the Score Really Means, LifeScore](https://lifescoretest.com/history/marilyn-vos-savant)
5. [Happy Birthday, Marilyn vos Savant! Parade](https://parade.com/533287/marilynvossavant/parade-columnist-marilyn-vos-savants-favorite-questions-from-the-last-30-years/)
6. [Articles by Marilyn vos Savant, Parade](https://parade.com/author/marilynvossavant)
7. [SticiGui: The "Let's Make a Deal" (Monty Hall) Problem, UC Berkeley](https://www.stat.berkeley.edu/~stark/SticiGui/Text/montyHall.htm)
8. [Why Almost Everyone Gets the Monty Hall Probability Puzzle Wrong, Scientific American](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-almost-everyone-gets-the-monty-hall-probability-puzzle-wrong/)
9. [A High IQ Makes You an Outsider, Not a Genius, The Atlantic](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/06/high-iq-intelligence-myth/683023/)
10. [Marilyn vos Savant IQ Score | What's Your IQ](https://whats-your-iq.com/en/iq-of-marilyn-vos-savant)
11. [From the archives: A Supernatural IQ?, The Skeptic](https://www.skeptic.org.uk/2026/10/from-the-archives-a-supernatural-iq-investigating-a-claim-to-an-extraordinary-iq/)
12. [Phenomenon 25, IQ Society](https://winone.iqsociety.org/issues/Phenomenon_25.pdf)
13. [Who Is Marilyn vos Savant?, Riot IQ](https://www.riotiq.com/articles/famous-people-and-iq/who-is-marilyn-vos-savant)
14. [Toastmasters Magazine, January 2000](https://content.toastmasters.org/image/upload/toastmaster-magazine-january-2000.pdf)
15. [The Monty Hall Problem is not a Probability Puzzle, R.D. Gill, Leiden University](https://pub.math.leidenuniv.nl/~gillrd/essential_MHP.html)
16. [Ask Marilyn by Marilyn vos Savant, BooksRun](https://booksrun.com/9780312951818-ask-marilyn)
17. [Marilyn vos Savant, Authors, Macmillan](https://us.macmillan.com/author/marilynvossavant/)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Society and history › Social life and human behavior › Psychology and behavior › Psychometrics and intelligence*
*Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Sep 17, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 12, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license