Public engagement, storytelling and complexity in maths communication

Promoting math interest in Europe is becoming a crucial need, not only for the subject, but more deeply for our society and culture. A basic knowledge in mathematics is required to understand and face current political and social challenges. In this context, the science of complexity plays a central role, catering a unitary overview to the world and allowing us a holistic understanding of reality. The complexity approach takes into account the correlations among the different levels of reality of maths and science communication systems and the circularity established among their components. It’s important to desing and developed actual communication strategies, targeted to the background and needs of the audience: from policy makers to potential industrial partners, from youth and school teachers to the general public. Within this landscape arises this research project whose main target is to find an attractive and effective way to communicate complexity theory to the general public and at the same time to use complexity theory to communicate science in general. But, before to face the problem of how to communicate complexity, and how using complexity ideas to communicate mathematics, it’s fundamental to deal with the complexity embodied in communicating mathematics. This leads to a study of past and present masters of science and mathematics communication starting from Galielo Galilei via Michael Faraday until Ian Stewart : a study to understand why they started doing that and how communicating mathematics has changed over the years, what difficulties they faced in communicating mathematics, the objectives they set out, the styles they used with different audience, what’s worth communicating and the tools of the trade. Short of material on mathematics communication has pushed me into a journey of knowledge, discovery and first-hand experience around Europe to find out scientific and organizational models that have led and are leading to special achievements in communicating mathematics. A direct result has been my personal meetings with some of the greatest experts in the field like Chris Budd, Alex Bellos, Andrew Jeffrey, Simon Singh, Kristof Fenyvesi, Andreas Matt, Eduardo Sáenz de Cabezon, Rogerio Martins, Cedric Villani and many others. Visiting periods, participation in conferences and events, direct cooperation and interviews have been key moments in this research path. During this journey, I’ve also developed projects and events focused on communicating mathematics to the general public, presented workshops for students and teachers, written a book for kids from 9-years-old and up based on an innovative approach to mathematics, and started creating a show on chaos and complexity which involves music, dance and visual graphics. All these things are presented in details in this doctoral thesis.