Ridhwaan Suliman on Twitter: Graphs, Insight and Empathy
The Daily Maverick interviewed Dr Ridhwaan Suliman, a senior researcher at CSIR who has entered the spotlight by posting his concise, easy-to-understand COVID numbers graphs on Twitter.
Trained as a mechanical engineer and with a PhD in applied mathematics, he develops computational tools to model and simulate physical systems and processes. Equations in real-world contexts and how they govern physical systems are the relationships he translates into code. And from the code and modelling he can find solutions to make things work more optimally.
As a boy, he took apart his brothers’ old toys to see how they worked, and he took the same approach with COVID data to make sense of it. He started tracking the data in early 2020, and wanted to contribute in some way amidst all the growing uncertainty.
“When I started seeing the raw numbers that were being fed to us daily I couldn’t quite make sense of it myself because the raw numbers in isolation don’t show what’s happening, actually.”
As he tweeted his analyses, he drew attention for his concise summaries of the situation, and praise for helping people to understand the trends. However, he stresses that this is all unpaid, with nobody else’s agenda and that he is not a medical expert.
“I’m just comfortable with the numbers.” He gratefully turns to the science experts he engages with on Twitter because “there’s so much more to learn”, he says. That, and a lot of background reading, which he readily dives into.
Dr Suliman’s tracking of the data let him identify gaps and to add to the call for open data, better data collection and smarter analysis. This allows for the factoring in of more variables and laying out of better parameters. “Sure, data can be manipulated to fit a certain narrative, but the benefits outweigh the risks,” he says.
Even in the polarising, easily toxic world of Twitter, Dr Suliman’s interactions show a great empathy.
“We’ve all had numerous moments in this pandemic when things have been depressing and that’s probably something that doesn’t come out on Twitter because you’re generally only sharing things when things are hunky-dory, you don’t share when you’re not okay. There have been many times when I’ve just wanted to stop tweeting, but I get drawn back by people who reach out and say ‘you’re helping me’ – and that’s good enough reason to continue.”
Since he first started on Twitter, he has since appeared numerous times on television to explain the data behind COVID numbers.
Despite his newfound fame however, he looks forward to the time when he can travel again. “I’ll trade the followers any day for our lives to go back to some sense of normality,” he says.
Source: Daily Maverick
