Marilyn Vos Savant - Rise To Fame and IQ Score

Rise To Fame and IQ Score

In 1985, Guinness Book of World Records accepted vos Savant's IQ score of 190 and gave her the record for "Highest IQ (Women)." She was listed in that category from 1986 to 1989. She was inducted into the Guinness Book of World Records Hall of Fame in 1988. Guinness retired the category of "Highest IQ" in 1990, after concluding that IQ tests are not reliable enough to designate a single world record holder. The listing gave her nationwide attention and instigated her rise to fame.

Guinness cites vos Savant's performance on two intelligence tests, the Stanford-Binet and the Mega Test. She was administered the 1937 Stanford-Binet, Second Revision test at age ten, which obtained ratio IQ scores (by dividing the subject's mental age as assessed by the test by chronological age, then multiplying the quotient by 100). Vos Savant claims her first test was in September 1956, and measured her ceiling mental age at 22 years and 10 months (22-10+), yielding an IQ of 228. This alleged IQ calculation of 228 was listed in Guinness Book of World Records, listed in the short biographies in her books and is the one she gives in interviews. Sometimes, a rounded value of 230 appears.

Ronald K. Hoeflin calculated her IQ at 218 by using 10–6+ for chronological age and 22–11+ for mental age. The Second Revision Stanford-Binet ceiling was 22 years and 10 months, not 11 months. A 10 years and 6 months chronological age corresponds to neither the age in accounts by vos Savant nor the school records cited by Baumgold. She has commented on reports mentioning varying IQ scores she was said to have obtained.

Alan S. Kaufman, a psychology professor and an author of IQ tests, writes in IQ Testing 101 that "Miss Savant was given an old version of the Stanford-Binet (Terman & Merrill 1937), which did, indeed, use the antiquated formula of MA/CA × 100. But in the test manual's norms, the Binet does not permit IQs to rise above 170 at any age, child or adult. And the authors of the old Binet stated: 'Beyond fifteen the mental ages are entirely artificial and are to be thought of as simply numerical scores.' (Terman & Merrill 1937).... the psychologist who came up with an IQ of 228 committed an extrapolation of a misconception, thereby violating almost every rule imaginable concerning the meaning of IQs."

The second test reported by Guinness was the Mega Test, designed by Ronald K. Hoeflin, administered to vos Savant in the mid-1980s as an adult. The Mega Test yields deviation IQ values obtained by multiplying the subject's normalized z-score, or the rarity of the raw test score, by a constant standard deviation, and adding the product to 100, with vos Savant's raw score reported by Hoeflin to be 46 out of a possible 48, with 5.4 z-score, and standard deviation of 16, arriving at a 186 IQ in the 99.999996 percentile, with a rarity of 1 in 26 million. The Mega Test has been criticized by professional psychologists as improperly designed and scored, "nothing short of number pulverization."

Although vos Savant's IQ scores are high, the more extravagant sources, stating that she is the smartest person in the world and was a child prodigy, are received with skepticism. Vos Savant herself says she values IQ tests as measurements of a variety of mental abilities and believes intelligence itself involves so many factors that "attempts to measure it are useless." Vos Savant has held memberships with the high-IQ societies Mensa International and the Prometheus Society.