Meet the local woman and PBS show host billed as ‘The Bill Nye of Math’
Science has Bill Nye. And history has documentaries. Even reading seems to have an endless catalog of engaging videos analyses.
Math? Not so much. The Kurt Gödel story didn’t end well, and “Fibonacci Fanatics” doesn’t really roll off the tongue.
That disconnect is exactly what former elementary teacher Caroline Farkas noticed while in the classroom during the pandemic. As virtual learning became the norm, she found herself competing with video games, Youtube and social media for her students’ attention. She searched for fun, high-quality math videos for her upper elementary students. But she came up empty.
So she decided to make them herself.
What started as a solution for her own classroom has since grown into Doodles & Digits, a Central Ohio-based educational media company that helps elementary students see math differently. Through colorful animations, real-world storytelling and career-focused lessons, Farkas’ videos show students that math doesn’t stop when the school bell rings—it shows up everywhere from race tracks and salons to fire departments, zoos, and rocket launches.
“I couldn’t find any math videos that my students enjoyed,” Farkas said. “All other subjects got things like Bill Nye or BrainPOP. When it came to math, it was kind of like a desert.”
Before launching Doodles & Digits, Farkas admits she wasn’t exactly what most people would call a “math person.” In fact, math was once her least favorite subject.
She intentionally packed her high school schedule with art classes instead, never imagining she’d someday build a career around teaching math. That perspective, she says, has become one of her biggest strengths.
“I always like to tell people I have not always been a ‘math person,'” Farkas said. “If you would’ve told high school Caroline that I was going to be running a math company, I would’ve rolled my eyes.”
Everything changed after accepting a fourth-grade math teaching position. Once she discovered creative ways to explain concepts through humor, storytelling and illustrations, she realized students didn’t necessarily dislike math—they just needed a different way to experience it.
That philosophy now serves as the foundation of Doodles & Digits.
Farkas taught herself animation, launched a YouTube channel and has since expanded the brand into a public television series, with a new learning platform expected to launch later this year. The videos have reached viewers in more than 120 countries, all while remaining rooted in Central Ohio.
Season two, premiering this fall, explores how math is used in more than 30 different careers. Students will see everything from how firefighters rely on elapsed time to manage oxygen tanks to how hairstylists use fractions while mixing color, helping answer one of the most common questions teachers hear in the classroom: “When am I ever going to use this?” The animated version of Farkas that often populates her PBS show even has a chicken companion, the eponymously-named Doodles, who joins her in each episode.
While some professions naturally seem math-heavy, Farkas says she’s continually surprised by just how many careers depend on elementary math concepts.
“We really tried to make it so every student could see, ‘The math I’m learning right now in class I can use one day,'” she said. “Whether it be I’m a rocket scientist or I want to cut hair, whatever their dream is, hopefully they’ll see that math will be a part of it.”
Despite growing Doodles & Digits into a multi-platform educational brand, Farkas still views herself as a teacher first.
She regularly connects with educators, encourages them to suggest future lesson topics and continues creating resources based on what teachers say their students need most. For Farkas, success isn’t measured by subscriber counts or television distribution, it’s measured by confidence.
“The thing that’s made me most proud is hearing parents and teachers say they’ve seen their kids go from, ‘I’m not good at math,’ to, ‘I can do this,'” she said.
Looking ahead, Farkas hopes to continue building Doodles & Digits into a nationally recognized educational media company based right here in Columbus.
Her mission, however, remains the same as it was when she first sat in front of her computer searching for a math video her students might actually enjoy: helping kids realize that math isn’t something to fear—it’s already part of the world around them.
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