Not all Asians are good at math, but Kyne Santos is.
Santos, a 22-year-old drag queen and former contestant from the streaming show Canada’s Drag Race, is now using TikTok to teach math in full drag, NBC reports.
The videos, streamed to a 700,000 follower platform, showcase how math can be used in the real world.
“The classic question that people ask in school is, ‘When am I ever going to need this?’ And that is a question that I try to answer in my videos,” said Santos, whose username is OnlineKyne.
One of her videos discussed the classic riddle of whether a sheet of paper could be folded in half more than seven or eight times, Yahoo! reports. Santos’ audience gave glowing reviews, despite the video tackling concepts like exponential growth.
“I think I would’ve passed 10th-grade math if I had a drag queen as my teacher,” one TikTok user commented, according to Yahoo.
Beyond rekindling the passion students generally lose for math after graduation, Santos’ work has also shed a light on misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Another video pointed out how a Georgia graph from its Department of Public Health tracking COVID-19 cases was misleading, incorrectly indicating that cases had decreased consistently, NBC reports.
“There are people out there breaking quarantine and lawmakers easing restrictions because of data just like this, and it comes at the cost of human life,” Santos said in the May 21 TikTok.
Santos, a mathematical finance major at the University of Waterloo, also aims to break down cultural stereotypes.
“In the Philippines, where we come from, gay people are always the butt of every joke,” Santos said. “I do want to show people that you can be smart and successful and be whoever you want to be. You can wear green hair and long nails and black lipstick and have those same accolades.”
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