Last name in French means learned. learning came easy to her considering she has an IQ of 228. Vasavan was born in St Louis Missouri on August 11, 1946 to immigrants from Germany and Italy. Her parents never told her she was exceptional.

She once said in an interview, no one really paid much attention to me I mean somebody who knows, but at the same time how people use it, you'll use it to say a savant a genius like uh, mostly because I was a girl and I accepted that. But the world would pay attention in 1985 when she topped the Guinness Book of World Records list as the smartest person in the world. She was nearly 40 when she shot into the spotlight Parade Magazine wrote a profile on her and readers had so many questions for her that the magazine offered her a Sunday column ask Marilyn which exists to this day. In this column, she ignited one of the fiercest debates in probability of the 21st century.

Oh, the Monkey In 1990, a reader asked her the following question: suppose you're on a game show and you're given the choice of three doors. Behind one door is a car behind the others goats. You pick a door say number one and the host who knows who what's behind the doors opens another door. Say number three which has a goat He says to you, do you want to pick door number two Is it to your advantage to switch your choice of doors? Wow, This is known as the Monty Hall problem.

This is one of the only methods of mathematical problems that I Personally don't agree with them. so I don't you do the math if you want to I don't care I personally disagree with the answer one or door number two or door number three. Would it be in your interest to switch from door number one to door number two? I'll give you a few seconds to think about it. Most people assume that both doors are equally likely to have the prize, so they don't see the benefit of switching.

However, Vasavant replied, yes, you should switch The first store has a one in three chance of winning, but the second door has a two and three chance. She got so much heat for this response and couldn't have imagined the backlash that would follow thousands of angry letters and said 90 of them told her she was wrong. Scott Smith Who has a PhD from the University of Florida wrote there is enough mathematical illiteracy in this country and we don't need the world's highest IQ propagating more shame of George Mason University You blew it. As a professional mathematician, I'm very concerned with the general Public's lack of mathematical skills.

Please help by confessing your Heir and in the future being more careful. Don Edwards of Oregon Put it this way, maybe women look at math problems differently than men, but actually the people who sent her the not so friendly letters were absolutely wrong. Switching your door does increase your probability of winning the prize. When you first choose door number one, there's a one in three chance that the prize is behind that one in a two in three chance that it's behind one of the other two.

but then the host steps in and gives you some help by open up the door they know is a loser. So door number two must have the rest of the chances. It went from having a one in three chance to a two and three shot at the prize since the host filtered out the bad door for you. Door number three, which increase the chance of the other one doubles your odds of winning or put another way.

So yeah, take tour number two and thank you for the extra 33.3 percent. The outcry against Vasavan was so extreme that she felt compelled to devote several other columns to explaining her logic. She noted that the benefits of switching can be proven if you were to play through the six games that exhaust all possibilities. This is contingent on the host.

You guys, you guys are getting balls. Okay, but chat I was just as well as Judah Azure Okay, I Spent like two hours okay on stream, debating this to get and either being a problem you know it's true. man. opening a door with a goat mapping out all the possibilities shows there's a higher chance of winning if you switch than if you stay.

It's easier to understand the problem if there are many more doors say you chose one door out of a hundred. The host then eliminates 98 doors that they know don't have a prize behind them that leaves two doors the one you chose and the only other one remaining. Do you switch now? Absolutely absolutely not because my door I Love right the door above I Love it survived Battle Royale I Had to fight all the other doors and it survived. It's gonna be special.

It's got It's gotta be bro bro. it's got it survived so much. Why would I give up on it? When you first picked you only had a 1 in 100 chance of getting the right door. The odds of it being behind the other doors was 99 out of a hundred.

The host then filters out the options for you by eliminating 98 bad doors that they know don't have the prize. This is to your advantage because it leaves the remaining door with the rest of the odds a 99 out of 100 chance of having the car. Some eventually admitted they were in the wrong. A team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology worked on the problem and afterwards admitted you are indeed correct.

My colleagues at work had a ball with this problem and I dare say that most of them including me at first thought you were wrong to which she responded thanks MIT I needed that. As for that math professor I mentioned earlier who sent that not so friendly letter Professor Sachs later conceded after removing my foot from my mouth I'm now eating Humble Pie I Vowed as Penance to answer all the people who wrote to castigate me. It's been an intense professional embarrassment. Our biggest misconception is assuming that two choices mean a 50 50 chance of something happening.

This makes sense if we don't have any other information. If I picked two people and asked who would win a tennis match and you don't know anything about them, you have a 50 50 shot of getting it right. But if I said player A just took up the sport yesterday and player B has won Wimbledon this would likely change your choice. Information matters just like when the game show host oh, I get it, then wait my Battle Royale that was actually really good.

They put all other doors in a battle royale and that one won. therefore I like that one but it's not special but this one is it a battle all the other ones and survived. Therefore, mine is whatever because there's the one that won the drop down. Holy holy I Get it.

I Get it out of all doors. Mine hasn't been verified yet and any battles we can't know, right? But we know for a fact that this one snapped on everybody. so it has to be at least to that degree Better yo think about them, You have a 50 50 shot of getting it right. But if I said player A just to get the sport yesterday and player B has won Wimbledon you just have to do it backwards instead.

So instead of saying that it's so good, it's so bad this would likely change your choice. Information matters. Just like when the game show host knew which door had a goat, they weren't opening up a door randomly. So the more you know, the more informed decisions you can make.

Vasavant once said people that we think are very smart are not necessarily very smart. She explained they're more likely or experienced rather than intelligent. What does she think is holding people back from their intellectual potential? She's been critical of compulsory schooling because she says students learn passively. They sit there and are told I'm all for this challenge.

She figures out one problem. but and now the whole world is restructuring it and people are dumb and Switzerland is stupid people I think Independence She went so far as to say I would rather not see compulsory schooling. As for herself, she never graduated from University dropping out of Washington University in St Louis after two years to start a career in investment before following her real passion writing, leading to her famous answer to the problem that stumped the world. There's another way to learn that doesn't involve sitting in a classroom.

Brilliant is an online Interactive bro. I have extremely high. Can you know that there's more world leaders who are male and typically I think that's a good thing. Women should not impede positions of extreme oh my God et cetera et cetera, because we're too emotional I'm feeling a lot of emotion right now True I mean I mean uh yo I wasn't saying yo I was listening guys I was nothing.

So the thing is that since I was I wasn't listening I just said yeah because whatever is that a problem. Imagine a group of people. How big do you think the group would have to be before? There's more than a 50 chance that two people in the group have the same birthday. assume for the sake of argument that there are no twins that every birthday is equally likely and ignore leap years.

Take a moment to think about it. What do you think the group would have to be before there's more than 50? Imagine a group of people. How big do you think the group would have to be before? There's more than 50 chance that two people in the group have the same. It's like, remember, you take it, you take it.

you fold it and you fold it again. and then you fold it again and again and again and again. And every time you fold it, it's two people one. So then I think I got it right I think I got it.

You fold it on itself until zero and you amount of times you folded is how many people you need and that would be 365. Thank you Minus two years. How many good was that? I think I Gotta drive though I'm gonna get a riddle I'm not into this I'm eight. Well it doesn't matter.

There was a bad numbers, bad numbers, bad number chat. Let's say let's say this is 264 right Bing Bong Bing Bang bang. So dang it. What am I doing another one? I'm doing bro I Don't know Birthday: Assume for the sake of argument that there are no twins that every birthday is equally likely and ignoringly take a moment to think about my video you should watch.

The answer may seem surprisingly low. In a group of 23 people, there is a 50.73 chance that two people will share the same birthday. But with 365 days in a year, how is it possible that you need such a small group to get even odds of a shared birthday? Why is our intuition so wrong to figure out the answer? Let's look at one way a mathematician might calculate: fall asleep to your voice I Like to pretend we're cuddling when Im going to sleep I Don't know how to tell you this because you don't know me but I might be in love with you. What the did I Just listen to what the yo odds of a birthday match.

We can use a field of mathematics known as combinatorics which deals with the likelihoods of different combinations foreign. The first step is to flip. The problem. We're trying to calculate the odds of a match directly is challenging because there are many ways you could get a birthday match in a group.

Instead, it's easier to calculate the odds that everyone's birthday is different. How does that help? Either there's a birthday match in the group or there isn't. So the odds of a match and the odds of no match must add up to 100 percent. That means we can find the probability of a match by subtracting the probability of no match from 100..

To calculate the odds of no match, start small. Calculate the odds that just one pair of people have different birthdays. One day of the year will be person A's birthday, which leaves only 364 possible birthdays for person. B.

The probability of different birthdays for A and B or any pair of people is 364 out of 365. about 0.997 or 99.7 pretty high 415 possible pairs is just one example where math control Pairs and the probability that two people have the same birthday is more than 99.9 teen possible. The birthday problem makes more sense. Every one of those 253 pairs is a chance for a birthday match For the same reason.

In a group of 70 people, there are 2 450. 10 people have the same birthday Bro I cannot do bro I Thought it was that simple. This is a bugging I think yeah because I think me thinking I actually might have hurt my brain dude am I lost permanent brain power from this. Oh my God.

that actually hurt your way of thinking. Quite intriguing. It's like the abstract thinking of a brilliant mind, but without the brilliance. Sometimes.