“It’s important to speak in a relaxed manner and remove the negative emotional burden surrounding mathematics.”

With the status of illustrious unknown consigned to the past and duly propelled by success on social media, Gabriel Guimarães visited, last week, the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon (Ciências ULisboa) for another outreach event. At the session organised by the Ciências em Harmonia project, the audience was mainly composed of students already familiar with the young northerner who, at a tender age, was confronted by a teacher who told him he understood nothing about mathematics and led him to study “obsessively” until he completed his undergraduate and master’s degrees in the subject – and, as an adult, began a career as a mathematics communicator with published books and more than 250,000 followers on social media.

At the session "Science Communication in the Age of Misinformation", Gabriel Guimarães faced head-on a certain disbelief that seems to hound science and demonstrated how some techniques that play with tension, responding to practical questions and adapting to the audience make a difference when it comes to getting the message across.

To leave no room for doubt, he showed that in every mathematician there is also a heart. And he illustrated the power of feeling by recalling Ignaz Semmelweis (1818-1865), a Hungarian doctor who ended up in disgrace and died beaten in an asylum, after confronting the medical profession for not washing their hands and contributing to a significant number of deaths of women during childbirth.

Despite having revealed auspicious results with the most basic hygiene practices, Semmelweis did not achieve a scientific explanation – but that was not his only failing, recalls Gabriel Guimarães: “Ignaz Semmelweis did not know how to communicate in the most empathetic way, in addition to not having a scientific explanation.” And it was with the lesson of empathy duly consolidated that the young communicator introduced techniques that make life easier for those who work daily with complexity – and gave the following interview.

Your lectures and videos on social media talk about mathematics, but would it be correct to say that you are also dealing with emotions?

Yes, of course. That is one of the main objectives. We are communicating, we are talking to people, and people are multidimensional beings. Therefore, if we want to communicate effectively, we have to take into account the emotions we are provoking in people, use the appropriate tone of voice, and it is super important to speak in a relaxed way to remove this weight and this very negative emotional burden that people still have about mathematics.

Are there known techniques to achieve these objectives?

Yes. So, I introduced techniques (during my time at Ciências ULisboa) that start with a provocative question, for example, and then unfold the story with some tension to capture people’s curiosity and, in the end, conclude with an outcome that leaves people’s curiosity satisfied.

Do you agree that there is nothing too complex to be communicated?

I believe so, but of course, if it is an extremely complex subject with many layers, and if we do not have much time, we will have to do some simplification. But it all stems from the same principle: if we want people to pay attention and understand, we have to use certain strategies to really capture their attention, especially in an era where it is increasingly difficult because there is so much competition, but I believe everything can be communicated. I work a lot with social media and we have to be aware that, perhaps, there are thousands of videos being uploaded to the platform every second. People do that scrolling (the sliders that allow you to move the Internet page up or down) very quickly. So, if I cannot grab their attention to watch my video in the first few seconds, people will skip it and watch another. There is competition in that sense, with so much content available.

Can you give an example of a mathematics subject that is more complicated to explain to the general public?

It’s very subjective, but in my case, perhaps it was, for example, differential geometry or something of that sort. If I wanted to talk about the topic, I would have to start by capturing people’s attention and try to relate differential geometry to something from everyday life, with a geometric object they are familiar with, to try to materialise, essentially, the mathematics.

Is it assumed that this isn’t enough to replace lessons…?

No, it’s nothing like that. My role as a communicator is to captivate people’s attention and make them want to learn more. My aim isn’t to teach them, it’s not to prepare them for an exam, it’s not to train them – it really is to spark curiosity. Of course, in a video of just a few seconds, I’m not going to be able to convey any profound teaching. So, communication and education are, obviously, interconnected, but one does not replace the other.

And how do the professors react? Aren’t there any criticisms or suspicion about your work?

To be honest, I did have that fear that there might be people who thought I could be, in some way, ridiculing or oversimplifying mathematics, but experience shows me that’s not the case. When I was studying, I was already making those videos, and I was really afraid that my teachers would discover my channel and think that I was dealing with mathematics in a less correct way… but, in fact, the reactions were always the opposite of what I thought they would be, they were always super positive reactions. Many times we have this idea that professors are monsters who only study, but they’re people like us who also like to have fun and enjoy entertainment… I think it’s a bit of an unfair stereotype.

So you’ve never had negative reactions…

From those professors, no… I’ve had negative reactions for other reasons, but not in terms of the science.

You are a science communicator… do you have any pretensions of being a mathematician?

Yes, I describe myself as a science communicator. I spent many years studying mathematics; pure mathematics is a field I love, but I much prefer communicating and taking mathematics that already exists and making it more accessible to people, rather than actually researching and discovering new things. When I was doing my undergraduate degree and my master's, I was very undecided about what to do, because I liked both fields a lot, but I chose a communication field, because I think it's something I enjoy more. I really like studying and learning new things, but I like even more to take what already exists and communicate it, instead of looking for new things.

How do you see the evolution of a communicator’s career? Taking into account the pressure to grab attention in the first few seconds, is it possible to add new layers of complexity to the content you produce?

There are several platforms and I do various different types of communication; I can run workshops that last an hour and a half, or I make one-and-a-half-minute videos… and I also make slightly longer videos for YouTube. In terms of career, and the future… honestly, I don’t think much about the future, because I think the world changes far too quickly to make those kinds of plans. Even when it comes to social media, new platforms and trends are always emerging, and people, at a certain point, like one thing and then suddenly like something else. I don’t really make plans. I see what works at the time and take it from there.

You are promoting the power of mathematics, but that same mathematics is also a bogeyman that frightens many children and teenagers. Couldn’t these contents and experiences on social media also be useful for rethinking the way maths lessons are taught?

Yes, certain communication strategies would be beneficial if used in the classroom… of course, it is a more serious environment, and there are concrete learning objectives… therefore, it is not possible to simply turn the lesson into a game. Even so, there are certain strategies that people can use to communicate in a more appealing and more efficient way, and so the students end up learning better, because they will be more interested, and their curiosity will be awakened. And people must not forget that this already exists out there, on social media. It is necessary to pay attention to what students like, what students consume and the way they live in order to communicate and teach in the best possible way.