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David Bessis Profile picture
David Bessis
@davidbessis
Rogue mathematician. "The product of mathematics is clarity and understanding." — Bill Thurston
Mar 31 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Bill Thurston learnt to see in 4 and 5 dimensions. Here's how he did it: ⤵️ Image Thurston's story illuminates the nature vs nurture debate: davidbessis.substack.com/p/beyond-natur…Image
Mar 29 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
The math equivalent of a celebrity selfie: a picture I took in the summer of 2000, at the Yale Math Dept (you can see my reflection in the glass.) Many are gone now. Getting the chance to know them and have ongoing conversations was a life-changing experience. Image Most people probably recognize Mandelbrot, so there's no need to explain who he was. With Serge Lang and me, he was one of the three francophones on the list, so we often chatted during tea.
Oct 24, 2024 • 17 tweets • 4 min read
How I woke up one day and decided to solve a math conjecture from the 1970s ⤵️ Image Until my early 30s, I considered myself a decent, second-rate mathematician. I had published nice papers in nice journals, but had never thought of myself as someone capable of solving “big” problems.
Aug 7, 2024 • 29 tweets • 6 min read
Why you don't understand math — and what you can do about it. ⤵️ Math isn't just hard; it’s also confusing. Some people struggle with it. Others are stunningly good and can’t figure out why.
Meanwhile, the “unreasonable effectiveness of math” fascinates everyone.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unrea…
Jul 26, 2024 • 17 tweets • 5 min read
Wow, this *really* blew up! Thank you all for your interest and feedback.

I can’t reply to all individual comments, but here’s a follow-up with tentative responses to the most frequent objections and requests for clarification. Objection #1: couldn’t we imagine a complex expression mechanism that would take the Gaussian input and transform it into a power law?
— I'm getting this one a lot, from smart people, and they have a fair point.
Jul 25, 2024 • 38 tweets • 7 min read
A simple math proof that math talent isn’t primarily driven by genetics. ⤵️ Besides wealth, math talent is the most unbelievable form of inequality I’ve ever been faced with.
Jul 16, 2024 • 25 tweets • 6 min read
My most ambitious post ever: we've been *wrong* about math for 2300 years and I’m going to *fix this* in a single Twitter thread. Image From the time of Euclid, there has been two competing approaches to defining math:
1/ through what it studies: numbers, shapes, structures…
2/ through how it functions: axioms, theorems, logical deduction…
Jul 12, 2024 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
Incompetence in one figure: UN 2024 projection for India TFR:
- fertility has declined at constant slope for 60 years
- all recent data points toward a continuing decline
- no other country succeeded at stopping TFR decline
=> yet UN predicts TFR to magically stabilize overnight Image I find it amazing that the UN's entire "Population Division" is capable of MISSING the global collapse of fertility rates — a world-redefining phenomenon that anyone with a Wikipedia access can figure out in 10 minutes.
It paints a scary picture of how useless UN really is.
Jul 6, 2022 • 29 tweets • 8 min read
Si vous entendez dire que Maryna Viazovska a reçu la médaille Fields parce qu'elle est une femme et ukrainienne (comme dans le commentaires affligeants sous ce post de @lemondefr), voici quelques arguments pour répondre: 🧵 En 1611, le grand Johannes Kepler a formulé une conjecture devenue très célèbre... fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_…