In 1990, Marilyn vos Savant answered a math question that made the world erupt.

At the time, she was known for one astonishing fact: her IQ was 228—the highest ever recorded. She had read all 24 volumes of Encyclopedia Britannica by age 10, and later became the face of Parade Magazine’s “Ask Marilyn” column.

Then came the Monty Hall Problem:

You’re on a game show with 3 doors. Behind one is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door. The host opens one of the remaining doors, revealing a goat.

Do you switch?

Marilyn said, yes—you should switch.

The backlash? Brutal.

Over 10,000 letters flooded in. Nearly 1,000 were from PhDs—most telling her she was wrong.

“You are the goat!” one wrote.

“Maybe women just don’t understand probability,” another said.

But Marilyn was right.

Switching gives you a 2/3 chance of winning.

Staying? Only 1/3.

It took MIT simulations, TV shows like MythBusters, and countless professors to finally admit—she saw what they couldn’t.

Why did so many get it wrong?

Because the math felt wrong. The problem was simple—but our intuition isn’t built for probability. And because she was a woman, many ignored the logic and attacked the person.

Marilyn later said the real issue wasn’t math. It was how we teach thinking.

“Schools discourage independent thought,” she said. “We’re trained to memorize—not to reason.”

She still sees her gift as a blessing. But in a world that feared her brilliance, it was also a burden.

#WomenInSTEM #MathMatters

~Forgotten Stories