Kyne Santos, an MSc student in Applied Mathematics at Toronto Metropolitan University, has amassed a large social media following with educational videos that make math fun and engaging.Laura Proctor/The Globe and Mail
In his most popular video, viewed nearly 15 million times, Kyne Santos explains how to make a Mobius strip and what happens when you cut it down the middle.
There are many videos online that explain the geometric shape that has only one side and one edge, but this might be the only one in which the person doing the explaining is in drag – sparkling purple dress, dangling gemstone earrings, bright pink eye makeup, long black hair cascading over her shoulder, eyes shining with the excitement of geometry.
The video, and many that have since followed, combine Mr. Santos’ twin passions and led to his book, Math In Drag, published in 2024. (Mr. Santos uses she/her pronouns while in drag.)
“After people get over the confusion, they love it,” said Mr. Santos, a 28-year-old graduate student in the mathematics department at Toronto Metropolitan University. “I’ve been able to reach people who wouldn’t have been interested in math at all.”
Canadian students’ scores on provincial and international standardized math tests have been lacklustre for years. Poor performance in the subject has produced plenty of hand-wringing among teachers, policy-makers and parents. There are no easy answers. But whatever the specifics might be, changing the culture around math is a start. Personalities such as Mr. Santos, who find creative ways on social media to explore the subject, may be the key to getting more students to embrace and learn math.
In Ontario, only 52 per cent of Grade 6 students at English-language schools met the provincial standard in math in the 2025-2026 school year, an increase of one percentage point over the previous school year.
Communicators such as Santos, who has 1.6 million followers on TikTok, are key to efforts to make math ‘a little less scary,’ TMU professor and Santos’s thesis adviser, Anthony Bonato, says.Laura Proctor/The Globe and Mail
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s latest Program for International Student Assessment scores, which measures the performance of 15-year-olds from around the world, found 26 per cent of Canadian students performed below level 2, the baseline proficiency level, while 11.1 per cent performed at levels 5 and 6, the highest levels. Level 2 and above is required to participate fully and productively in society, according to the OECD.
“Math is not viewed as something that people want to be involved with or are scared of. What I’d like to see is the broadening awareness of what mathematics is,” said Anthony Bonato, a professor at Toronto Metropolitan University and Mr. Santos’ thesis adviser.
Communicators such as Mr. Santos, who has 1.6 million followers on TikTok – the biggest social media following for a math influencer in Canada – are key to that effort, Prof. Bonato said.
“Drag queens are not something we normally associate with mathematics,” he said. “It helps make math a little less scary. It makes it a lot more approachable.”
When the COVID-19 pandemic forced everyone into lockdowns, Santos, needing a creative outlet, began posting videos about math concepts in drag. ‘I started off just telling riddles, and then kind of explaining the solution,’ Santos says.Laura Proctor/The Globe and Mail
Growing up in Kitchener, Ont., Mr. Santos was a teacher’s pet, he said, and math was his best subject. His father, an engineer at Toyota, encouraged his interest. He began competing in math competitions in high school.
“That’s how I started to see that math was more than just solving problems to get the right answer, but actually there was some creativity to it,” Mr. Santos said.
It was also in high school when he began doing makeup and wig tutorials on YouTube, exploring his gender identity in a way he said was fun and creative.
When he began attending the University of Waterloo, one of the most prestigious math programs in the country, he began performing in drag at the campus pub.
In 2020, he competed on the first season of Canada’s Drag Race.
When the pandemic forced everyone into lockdowns, Mr. Santos, needing a creative outlet, began posting videos about some of his favourite math concepts in drag.
“I started off just telling riddles, and then kind of explaining the solution. And people really responded to it,” he said.
In 2024, he won the National Academies Eric and Wendy Schmidt Award for Excellence in Science Communications, which honours outstanding communicators who help make complex scientific topics accessible to the general public.
His video have explained everything from the etymology of the word “calculus” to why graph theory is a cool branch of mathematics.
There’s also the video of how to get good at math, or playing piano or playing Super Smash Brothers – and it’s not the fact that anyone is a “math person.”
“Practice girl, practice,” Ms. Santos says in the video.
Mr. Santos said he’s not only helping students feel better about doing math, he’s also helping dispel stereotypes.
“I’ve been able to reach people who maybe would have turned up an eyebrow at their kids watching a drag queen online, and then when they look over their kids’ shoulders and see that they’re learning about algebra, I think they can start to detangle some of the stereotypes they have,” he said.
“I also just want math to be cool.”