You know, I recently remembered a funny story from the 90s that shows how intuition can mislead even very smart people. It’s about Marilyn vos Savant and her famous answer to the Monty Hall problem.

It all started simply: a participant sees three doors, behind one is a car, behind the other two are goats. They choose a door, the host opens one with a goat, and then the question is—should they switch or stay? Most people think it doesn’t matter, but Marilyn vos Savant, known for her extraordinary IQ, gave the answer: "Yes, you should switch." And it caused a storm.

She received over 10,000 letters in response. Can you imagine? Almost a thousand from people with PhDs, and 90 percent of them were sure she was wrong. The academic community was outraged. But here’s the point: if you switch doors, your chances of winning become 2 out of 3, and if you stay with your original choice—only 1 out of 3. This isn’t intuition; it’s pure mathematics.

Marilyn vos Savant was right, and this was later confirmed by MIT computer simulations and even MythBusters experiments. Interestingly, she herself had a tough journey: despite her exceptional intelligence, she left Washington University to help with the family business. Later, she started writing the Ask Marilyn column in Parade Magazine in 1985, where she explained similar puzzles.

I like this story because it perfectly illustrates the difference between what seems right and what is actually correct. The Monty Hall problem has become a classic example of how probability theory can contradict our intuition. And Marilyn vos Savant proved this clearly.