Within a non-Euclidean distance of a few issues, Le Monde and Libération both ran an interview of Cédric Villani, not truly a coïncidence since he recently published Leçons de mathématique joyeuse, a general public book on mathematics (I did not read), derived from a series of conferences he gave in Paris ten years ago. With a chapter on the best and the worst errors of (Henri) Poincaré, where he states that statistics is a late-comer in the mathematics pantheon because “it is complicated, it is even completely counter-intuitive.” However, there is very little on mathematics and research in these interviews, as the interviewers are clearly more interested in the politics of Villani, a former deputé and unsuccessful candidate for the City of Paris mayorship. Although he is now teaching in both Lyon and Rennes, since he currently lives in a nearby village that happens to be very close to my family house in Morbihan.
