- TikTok's most popular videos typically consist of choreography, skits, or memes, but a niche group of math influencers is going viral.
- The #algebra and #mathematics pages on TikTok have hundreds of millions of views.
- Math educators and students said it's an exciting, fun, and helpful way of learning.
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Josh Martin, a junior at the State University of New York at Albany studying physics and math, has always known that math was a specialty of his. "I'd always been told that I kind of had a little bit of a gift for teaching, because I would be teaching people in my class," he told Insider. So in 2018, as a college freshman, he started a YouTube channel to help his fellow students understand their math classes.
But in December 2019, he decided to try out TikTok, the new short-form video app that started booming last summer.
While a whiteboard filled with algebra equations isn't the backdrop of a typical TikTok video, Martin soon found a huge audience on the app. His YouTube channel has 60,000 subscribers, but his TikTok currently boasts 336,000 followers and three million likes.
TikTok's most popular videos consist of choreography, skits, or memes, but Martin is part of a niche group of math influencers that's gained traction on the app. "I've been able to help millions of students and it's just been crazy to see," Martin said.
A niche group of TikTokers are filling the app with equations, personal finance, and SAT help.
The small but mighty math trend is quickly growing, with videos covering everything from basic algebra equations to long division, graphing, and common SAT problems, attracting an audience from pre-teens to college students. The #mathematics page on TikTok has 166 million views, and the #algebra page has 48.5 million. While that's definitely a big chunk of viewership, the #dance and #coronavirus hashtags have billions of views.
While Martin and others tend to use TikTok to teach lessons for math classes and exams, Humphrey Yang, a 32-year-old entrepreneur, focuses more on educating the general public on personal finance and trying to "not make finance so boring."
"If you say you want to talk about finance, people usually tune out," Yang told Insider. "But it can be pretty fun." One of his most popular videos is from February, and it depicts Jeff Bezos' wealth using rice. The clip went viral on TikTok and on Twitter.
In the video, Yang masterfully demonstrates the scale of Bezos' massive wealth: Each grain of rice is $100,000. "I wanted to create something that was visually satisfying but also educational," Yang said of the idea. He also used the rice method to demonstrate the number of coronavirus cases worldwide.
Similarly, Martin used algebra to solve for how long it would take for every American to contract COVID-19 if the US doesn't flatten the curve.
Math educators are starting to see the value of TikTok.
Rory Yakubov, a ninth-grade algebra and geometry teacher at Old Bridge High School in Old Bridge, New Jersey, started an account just to communicate with her own students. But now her TikTok, @ITeachAlgebra, has more than 525,000 views. "I just started making some videos that I thought were funny that my students would love," said Yakubov, whose videos are mostly comedic clips that help emphasize the lessons she's teaching in class.
Jeff Shih, a mathematics education professor at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas and a National Council of Teachers of Mathematics board member, told Insider that Yang's rice videos actually inspired his classroom of future teachers. "That actually got us talking in my elementary math methods class about different ways to engage," Shih told Insider. "There are so many larger issues about inequity and access and it seems like a way that we can use a platform that kids are already participating in."
Shih said that he thinks TikTok's one-minute-or-less video format works well for math education. "The neat thing about them is just the regular ones are almost all entertaining at some level," he said. "They're digestible because they're 15 seconds to a minute long, and they can get you thinking."
These accounts are becoming helpful resources as students attempt to learn remotely due to the coronavirus.
Now that students across the US are taking classes online because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Martin said he has seen an increase in his viewership. "I'm getting a lot more views than the normal," he said. "I think it's because people are starting to turn to the internet for help with their studies."
Yakubov said she's "thankful" to have her TikTok during this pandemic. "Now that I am separated from my students and I'm thinking it's probably going to be for the long haul of the year," she said, "at least I can reach them in that nontraditional educational way."
Alexis Loveraz, a junior at Harlem Prep High School in New York, is also taking on the role of the teacher with his TikTok, which has 165,000 followers and 2.1 million likes. Loveraz echoed Martin, noting that he'd also noticed an increase in viewership on his page since schools nationwide began shutting down in March. "I think people have to depend on YouTube videos and TikToks to learn even more," he told Insider.
Loveraz is even using his platform to offer his own study groups online via Google Classroom. There are more than 2,000 students using his algebra, chemistry, and physics programs. He hopes this will help his fellow students learn more and help drill new knowledge into their brains while they take their own classes remotely. "If you study more and keep practicing the topic that you're going to learn, you're going to learn it," he said.
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