[OT] The Time Everyone “Corrected” the World’s Smartest Woman [x-post r/anarchism]

Gender absolutely played a role in the response to Savant.

The impact of writing in a popular magazine while boasting an "IQ of 228" can't really be overlooked though. I mean, 228 is wayyy higher than 155. Snark aside, Marilyn vos Savant popularized this question in a way that had never previously been done.

I'd also really expect the readership of American Statistician to be more knowledgeable on the topic that the readers of Parade. The American Statistician article also included a full enumeration of the possible outcomes of the choices as proof (Marilyn's second article on the topic contained a similar table but her first only used the sketch of a proof with the "million door" thought experiment).

The Monty Hall answer is possibly the most infamous counterintuitive result in mathematics. Even in this thread, linking to an article with a male author about how many people incorrectly corrected Savant, there was at least one poor sap who tried to defend the wrong answer.

The main reason I'm arguing this now is that I think it's important to note how significant the popularization of this puzzle was at the time. It's easy to look back now and say everyone responding was stupid, but this problem is now literally used as a textbook example of confusions arising with conditional probabilities. Framing it mainly as a gender issue does a disservice to Savant and is in some ways overly kind to the letter writers (sure, they would have understood it correctly if a man wrote the column /s).

I do think people may have gone out of their way to respond because of the fact that Marilyn was a woman and because of her high I.Q. columnist persona or been slow to correct their initial errors due to the shame of losing to her, but that's not the only story.

/r/GamerGhazi Thread Link - priceonomics.com