Marilyn vos Savant IQ

The figure on record is 228, from a Stanford-Binet test taken at age 10 in 1956. Her mental age was put at 22 years 10 months, and 22.8 divided by 10 gives about 228. A later Mega Test result of 186 was criticised as poorly designed and scored.

Guinness listed vos Savant under "Highest IQ" from 1985 to 1989 and dropped the category in 1990. It concluded that IQ tests were too unreliable to name one record holder, because scores from different tests cannot be compared and ratio scores at the extreme are shaky.

Yes. In her September 1990 column she said a player should switch doors, which wins two times in three. Many readers, including some with mathematics degrees, wrote in to say she was wrong. Simulations and the maths both back her answer.

The 228 comes from the old ratio method: mental age divided by real age, times 100. A ten-year-old who performs like a 22-year-old gets about 228. Modern tests compare you with people your own age and cap out far lower.

On a modern scale where 100 is average and 15 points is one standard deviation, 228 would be far rarer than one in a trillion, more people than have ever lived. The ratio scale simply stops meaning anything that high.

That is why LifeScore treats 228 as a reported childhood score and uses a range of 186 to 228 that includes her later Mega Test result.

Vos Savant works by turning a puzzle into a plain-language rule and then testing the rule on small cases. Her columns show the method: she states the assumptions, runs the cases and answers in a few lines, even when readers disagree.

What supports it

• A Stanford-Binet test in 1956, at age 10, is reported to have given a mental age of 22 years 10 months, or a ratio IQ of about 228.
• Guinness listed her under "Highest IQ" from 1985 to 1989.
• A Mega Test in the mid-1980s gave 186, though professionals criticised that test as improperly designed and scored.

What it cannot prove

• Ratio IQ (mental age over real age) is not comparable with modern deviation IQ, and it breaks down at extreme values.
• Guinness retired the category because it judged the tests too unreliable to rank people.
• Vos Savant is a living person. LifeScore reports the public record and has no access to any private result.

Marilyn vos Savant's IQ is represented here by a retrospective estimate of 228, not a verified test result. Marilyn vos Savant is best known for exceptional logical reasoning. The useful question is what the surviving evidence shows, not whether a precise modern score can be recovered.

Public puzzle-solver and columnist. Her reputation rests on one childhood score and on decades of answering readers' logic questions in print.

The dominant archetype here is The Problem Solver. This archetype shapes decision patterns: what feels natural, what creates friction, and what blind spots tend to emerge.

Estimated IQ is 228. This is a rough estimate based on documented accomplishments and contemporary accounts, not a literal measurement.

She married Robert Jarvik, the scientist behind the Jarvik-7 artificial heart, in 1987.