An enrollment error put Dajae Williams in advanced geometry and ended up changing her life. In her first year at Kirkwood High School in Missouri, a teacher enrolled her by mistake; at 26, she was working as a quality engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Los Angeles.
In college, she took the beat of “Crank That”, by Soulja Boy Tell’em, and turned it into a rap about the quadratic equation. The song went viral on social media. Williams also traveled across the country with hip-hop songs to bring math and science closer to young people. The quadratic equation was no longer just an exercise: it also had a rhythm of its own.