The Story of TheBeautyofMath

all right so let's see if I can get through this video uh without uh too much emotional response uh not many people know uh the background of how the story got of the story of how the channel got started uh in its beginning and I kind of just wanted to share that because this is could alternatively be titled why I'm so thankful for all of you uh my viewers those who have tuned in over the years since the channel got started uh began in late uh 2019 in December of 2019 well I started earlier than that but it wasn't really it wasn't really formed yet as an idea and so I'm going to give you just one quote I guess you if you know me by now you should know that I love quotes there's so much wisdom in in them that I feel like we have a lot that we can learn from great minds who have had great things to say in our history John Von Newman said if people do not believe that mathematics is simple it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is and uh for me that's quite true um I I did not have a fantastic childhood um I was in foster care for part of it my parents were not together anymore and I won't go into all the details and bore you with all of that but it wasn't an easy upbringing I was kicked out at 18 from my parents' home I was not given uh or my my my father's house at that time and and I have no judgment of that decision it was a different era a different time and people thought about things differently than perhaps they might in the current ERA and um I did not obey the rules of the house so I was told that I needed to leave so at 18 years old I moved out and I have completely self-provided ever since I didn't get my first vehicle until 21 years old prior to that it was riding the bus uh worked at McDonald's for several years um and so I didn't know what what I wanted to do uh so I I didn't I didn't have money for school my education was not financed by anyone but me I'm still paying the student loans as of today um I did not actually finish my education and that's something that a lot of you don't know and I don't talk about it a lot especially in the beginning of the channel I never told that I don't have a degree I have an associates degree a two-year degree that's actually all that I have um I went to a few different SCH schols and due to you know mental health reasons uh depression namely um I struggled with it a lot at that age uh especially interactions socially and things like like that and so I dropped out and I wasn't able to finish and then what happens is your student loans start to acrw interest and they demand payment and if you're going to keep your car running and you have to and I've never had a vehicle paid for by anyone not $1 was ever paid for for any vehicle I've ever owned I got my first vehicle at 21 and um that's when I got my license didn't even have a license that never took driver's ated um had to teach myself basically how to drive with a friend uh they they helped me in a parking lot and that was it and that's how it goes and um when you're behind the eightball from 18 years old where you've got to provide for yourself everything all of your food your rent your shelter your toilet paper your clothes all of that uh that's what life was to me and I don't have any resentment towards my parents at all uh my they had their reasons and that I don't I don't hold anything against it I'm very grateful for who my father was and um it was that struggle I guess that helped to form the seed of how this channel began um it's um it's difficult to talk about it so I um yeah I uh I started the channel I guess I was teaching I was teaching tutoring in um a lot of different locations in Southern Cal California but I was just renting an apartment um that's what I could afford and then eventually when I before I met my my previous partner relationship I don't want to go into the details on that I'm not a very public person about the goings on in my life the person I was with at the time when I met them I rented out half a garage that's where I was living I had a small space in a house that I rented out from the owner in Southern California and during this time I'm working you're making 2530 an hour and that's it with no degree and it's kind of hard to get ahead and you've got to figure something out so I'm paying $700 a month in student loans and it's not easy to do that on $25 an hour while paying all your bills and so uh during the relationship it was apparent to me that if I wanted to try to own a home or anything that that I was going to need to uh make more than I was making and there wasn't really a means to do that so I needed to try something um I had never owned a laptop when I started this channel I still I I had I had no money to buy a laptop I couldn't afford one and so I borrowed the laptop from my work um the place that I was working at that time I went into one of the rooms there and filmed my very first video I didn't know anything about starting a YouTube channel I didn't watch all the instructional videos I watched about how to go about things I didn't know how to make thumbnails and anything like that I didn't know how to make it presentable or animations or other cool things that various channels do um I just thought that maybe I could teach and believe it or not when I was working I was actually fired once I was told by one by one tutoring center in Southern California and it was actually demoralizing I I remember I called my father at that time they had told me that I don't know how to teach and uh I carried that actually on my shoulder as a chip for a long time it was very motivating I almost gave up teaching completely um because I was told that they had cut my hours back to two or three a week and uh basically what had happened was I had assigned homework to kids who didn't like being assigned homework and so they reported that I wasn't a good teacher to the director of the tutor Center this was you know a while back now about 12 years ago and I was told that you know hey you're not you're not a very good teacher maybe you should be an actuary and so when you think that you'd like to be a teacher but you don't know if you have the skill or the talent to do so it's really disheartening to be told that and technically I wasn't fired but you can't you're getting three hours a week you can't you can't live with that so you've got to do something so I went somewhere else and I talked to my dad and you know he gave me some advice and I worked um at a different tutor Center in the area and started building a reputation and um in the community there where I was working uh people started to know that I was teaching competition math um I had a number of students that I had taught they didn't the place that I started teaching competition math from no one's ever taught me uh what it was in fact the only resource I've ever had to use was the books the aops books and that's why you'll hear me talk about them so uh so much that I I really recommend them because you can learn from just the books if you don't have access to resources to teaching to things like that and that's all I did I never had taught the book I did qualify for Amy when I was in high school um my senior year it took until then prior to my ninth grade year I didn't even know what A math competition was you I never heard of it and I went to a small small school out in the country it's a bottom 25% school not even ranked uh they don't even give it a ranking it's just bottom 25% uh in the history of my school I was the only Amy qualifier to ever come from there and it was just how much I loved the competition I guess it was something that every year it would come around and while I was not a happy kid in high school um residual effects from different things in my childhood and and just my relationships and a convergence of many different aspects of my life at that that time um it was my favorite time of year the questions were fun and interesting I had a great High School teacher they taught everything from freshman to Senor year very small school out in the country that's very common uh the entire school from freshman to senior class was less than 400 people my graduating class had about 85 people in it and uh anyhow so I that I remembered that and when I started tutoring to make a living to do something because it was the most income I could make without a degree and it took advantage of my ability to I thought teach and so I started their competition math program I talked to the director at that that Center uh that I worked at for more than 10 years I talked them into starting teaching this kind of content basically competition math level stuff going through volume one is where we started and then we would do a intro to algebra or intro to counting and probability um I taught her kids and eventually as I gained I went to the books again and again and again multiple times then I started to really understand the material at a much better level than I did in high school at all and and so um you know as I developed this reputation I kind of wanted to ask like do I actually know how to teach right could this actually be something is this just what my students tell me that are there or that my director tells me because you know happy workers are are motivated workers and they do better job so maybe they're just saying these things to be nice and I didn't really know honestly if I could teach that well or not and I thought maybe I could start a YouTube channel cuz I've got these things is putting pressure on me I don't have enough money for a home I still don't own um I've driven the same car for more than 10 years now it's paid off right I don't have the money yet to get a new one and why I've got a Honda Hondas last quite a long time you know and so it's it's there and I still rent I don't have a retirement account I don't have health insurance at that time so what do you do you need to increase your income quickly you could be a door Dash driver which is nothing to be ashamed of people do what they have to to do to get by um and so you need to pull in enough income to be able to provide for a family or have some kind of future your retirement plan non-existent I'm not sure Social Security is going to be here when I get to retirement age so I I again I needed to do something I needed to make a change and it was shortly after uh the passing of my father from cancer um he he passed in 2015 and that was a difficult time for me as well and um I I don't know I wanted to do something I guess to make him proud as well and just do something with my life you know I had not yet accomplished much of anything and perhaps that's because of how I started and again I have no regrets I don't at all look with any judgment towards them I have nothing but gratitude for how I was raised there's a lot within how I was raised that allowed me to get to where I'm at today and so um I made a video again I had no clue no clue what I was doing I borrowed a laptop from my work I used the onboard microphone and the little camera that's at the at the top of the bevel of the screen and filmed that very first video Back In December 2016 and I needed to get some feedback so I posted it on aops I actually made an aops account just to post that video and get feedback from people I'm going to link the link to that video in this description or not that video but that um well the video and I'll also link the aops post if you would like to go back and read it the thing was is that people in there had put a bunch of really good constructive criticism and there was about eight nine 10 people 10 kids I assume I put it in the Middle School Forum I didn't really know where to place it and just asked you know for their feedback on it and they said all the things that were true it was kind of boring kind of monotone there was no emotion no energy it was like I didn't I I wasn't comfortable and it's true I really wasn't comfortable I kind of tried to memorize everything that I wanted to say uh and even in this video here like I'm I'm just speaking from the heart I don't have any notes on this I didn't write anything down I'm just kind of traversing my thoughts and uh thinking about why I'm thankful for all of you and it's in part because I don't have that piece of paper that says you can teach well I mean that's what it's supposed to say it's supposed to say that the structures of educational Society have bestowed upon you the recognition that you are capable of teaching here have this teaching credential I don't have a credential I don't I don't have a degree so how am I supposed to be able to authenticate or validate what I am what I do and I thought maybe if I start the channel I'll tell you this is what I told some of my I had a student that I I I've befriended them since they are now at Carnegie melon about to graduate from there his name Frank and I had told him maybe I'll get discovered by aops right maybe I'll get to work for them or something like that I didn't know what to expect when I started the channel I had no idea it would get partnered to get partnered you need 240,000 240,000 watch minutes which is uh 4,000 hours in a one-year moving window and that's pretty formidable you can probably find all of the channels that never got partnered with YouTube there's a lot of them it's not easy and you know you've you've really got to put in the effort and there's no reward up front you have no idea if you're going to get partnered you've just got to keep putting out content and hustle and try your best not knowing what to do so when I made that video in 2016 you know uh the feedback kind of demoralized me it wasn't that they were wrong it was that they were right and I didn't know if I could do it I didn't know if I had the ability to talk to a camera to speak to you I wore a hat a lot in those days why did I wear a hat cuz I'm if you're hiding your eyes a little bit for me and I like the look of wearing a hat because it allowed me to put the bill down in public and you don't have to look at people I didn't have confidence that I would be able to succeed on the channel so a lot of my early videos you'll see I wore a hat all the time and now I rarely do a few people had pointed out that hey you should try not wearing your hat you look better without it and so so I I decided to stop wearing the hat and um anyhow I don't know if that video had a hat on it or not but the feedback it got more dislikes than any other video I ever posted um it had uh I think 84% likes and I'll show you a snippet at the end of this of what my channel average is it's currently 98.4% like to dislike ratio um in the public thing I don't think it shows any more your dislikes or something or how many I'm not sure it does I think they took that down because people get you know discouraged or something I don't know or it's used improperly you know I don't even know I don't know what they do with that um but anyhow so that one got the mo the lowest like to dislike ratio of any video I ever filmed and as a result of of how that turned out December 2016 I waited until December 2019 to actually start the channel and again when I got to December 2019 I still didn't own a laptop and I still never had I had a desktop um that I used when I was in school I just took notes on a pen pad and or a paper pad and that's it um and so the desktop is what I would turn in homework online for when I was at University even though I never like I said finished the the time that it took to get the degree it got to a point where it was prohibitively difficult to go back and um it just was too expensive and I couldn't afford it and maintain paying my bills and I'm I'm building up this debt in student loan debt that you're going to have to pay back um and so you know I didn't I now I'm not probably not going to go back I do have some people encouraging me to do so but I don't know that I need it anymore um I I I might I might not it's just uh it's not I don't need it to Define who I am and so in 2019 I actually borrowed the money from my work the the the woman that I was with at that time were no longer together uh she was not supportive in any way towards the channel uh she would belittle it all the time telling me Oh look at this channel they've got they've got a million views and I would get that kind of negative attack within my home all the time at that time and so I was not getting positive reinforcement and encouragement from that side of things and you know so in in December 2019 that that person wouldn't even approve of me buying a laptop cuz I thought I needed wanted to film um they wanted to save the money of course and uh you they wanted me to film on my phone or something but I don't really know how to do that again I'm not in video production I don't know anything about all of that the early videos you'll hear a lot of sound issues it turns out the laptop that I got the onboard microphone I still have that laptop today I teach with it a really fortuitous story I actually borrowed the money to get the laptop I got a Dell uh uh XPS 15 2in1 it was uh late 2019 my work financed it and I claimed to my the woman that I was with at that time again I don't want to go into the details of my life I claimed that uh my work had bought it for me so that I could get the channel started otherwise they would have it would have created huge fights at home and instead what I did is I paid back the laptop over the course of 10 months uh $200 a month to cover the cost of the laptop so it was two two grand for the laptop and I happened to think in advance just think about this is December 2019 I had to think maybe someday I'll teach classes online and if you know what happened in December 2019 that's when Co was starting to hit I had no idea any conception that things were going to shut down when I ordered the laptop and had I not had a laptop that I could write on the screen of I would not have been prepared for that and luckily we went we had that and immediately following the pandemic shutdowns uh online learning became something that was a lot more accepted prior to that point there was a lot of distrust of it and for for good reasons for some people it's not a good way to learn they need a teacher in front of them they get distracted things like that and for some it is and so uh I started the channel in December 2019 like the day I got the laptop I set it up and filmed and you can see that next video that I filmed it's got a very low setting because on the XPS 15 your screen's here and the camera's down below so it's looking up and the onboard microphone I didn't know I should have upgraded it I didn't want to spend all the bells and whistles I got almost a bare minimum on it I don't think it has an Nvidia card even or anything like that um it it it just doesn't yeah I couldn't afford to add all that stuff it would have been three grand for the laptop and I didn't know it would have any success whatsoever at all at that time and so I started filming I couldn't figure out what was wrong with the sound if you go back you'll hear the sound has got like this sound in the background it's not very good it turns out it was the onboard microphone and what I needed was an external mic and so now I have uh for instance this is a Focus right external mic XLR that I use to capture my sound with sound with and and then this microphone it's pretty cheap it's like you know 30 bucks or something like that I forget who makes it and so um yeah but the Focus right box got that and that solved the sound issue there were lighting issues I had to learn about I didn't know like I said about how to do video capture and also the speed now I'm filming with my desktop but the speed at which the lens the frames per second um the lighting has a big effect on if the video skips you'll see some of my older videos it looks like I'm talking but my lips don't match the sound and it looks like it's dubbed in and that was a result of there not being enough light for it to film at 60 frames per second so then I had a cheap external webcam and it was my mom actually she she bought this webcam um well she bought another one actually and that one ended up having some issues and somebody replaced it but this Logitech webcam that I film with was purchased by my mom as a gift and I I remember when she she had a major stroke in uh 2021 and I I wanted to make a tribute video to her and I can't I can't talk about it um it's just too much she was really encouraging to me to help me to start this channel back when there was no one and there was no subscribers and there was no views and and just telling me that I could do it and without that I'm not here this video is not being filmed and um I'm sorry just trying to hold together so how complicated life is right and so um I'm just grateful I guess to all of you because it wasn't Society it wasn't the institutions that told me with the piece of paper hey you you're able to teach we have decided by the signing of this document and award and you're going to walk up there and graduate yes you know how to teach the institutions didn't give me that you did and I'm I'm very thankful for that you helped me to discover uh who I was the ability that I had within me and and validate that ability and so um over the time you know um that's that's why I worked so hard um I you try you might see I've tried to respond to every single person I can in the comments you have to you've got to put in the work I stayed up all night on the 2020 contest to film the solutions overnight because I knew I needed to do something to get an edge to get ahead and if I could have those rolled out right at 88: a.m. when everyone's looking to discuss then maybe that would allow me to get ahead so I I took a bunch of coffee energy drinks and stayed up all night to film and so I filmed all of that and um it was 9 months it took 9 months to get partnered with YouTube I eclipsed the 240,000 watch minutes in a moving oneyear window in the first 9 months and um I'm exceptionally grateful to all of you I guess for coming along on this journey to where we're at now I'm Sorry by I just get emotional I'm not sure I can continue the video but I'm going to try you've you've given me the ability to hopefully I'm on a track now that hopefully someday I'll be able to buy a house someday I'll be able to afford to have kids and it took a long time and I'm not on the path that everybody else was on and so when you have your parents in whatever way that they're there whether you have one or two or you have adopted parents or anything anybody who puts out the effort don't ever take the love of your parents and the sacrifices that they make on your behalf or your grandparents or anyone who's helped you don't ever take that for granted not everyone gets the same thing and I'm not even going to claim that I've had the most difficult and challenging life we can look around the world there's people all over the place that would love to have had the chance to be born in the United States and have have the opportunity to do something with myself here with no degree not everyone has that you go to countries around the world like say North Korea and I used to teach this in my lessons as well students would come in to summer classes at the tutor Center where I worked and they would be lamenting I've got to spend my summer preparing for sat and it was this burden that they had to carry and I'd make them all read this article maybe I'll share it that talks about what it's like in life in North Korea and um how some of those people they don't they don't get access to anything they have no access they have no food the crime that they committed they're thrown in a prison camp was that they didn't properly praise the leader of the country and when you think about the contrast what I've had to go through versus what people there have to go through or you can go to various uh poor Nations around the world even within the United States the poorer people that we might have here hey I had a roof over my my head up until 18 some people don't have that right and um you know uh yeah I've actually been homeless before for about two weeks in my life in my early 20s um due to circumstances I won't go into all the things um lived in my car for a while so to now I guess discover U my ability I guess that has been authenticated and and again it's just not bestowed upon by a normal path most of you will go to university and get a degree and that degree is going to open doors for you to go where you want um I shared a part of the story once in my Discord server and that's another thing I wanted to thank specifically uh RIT Vic rustagi um he is the owner of another Discord server now called teos Academy you'll notice him on my website in the resources um not resources but the Links Page if you go to the Links Page you'll see uh his book that he wrote I announced it he spent um more than a year hundreds of hours writing the content for this book to help you prepare and it's free and he's doing that for free and so that's another reason that I started the channel too I I didn't know what my ability was I didn't know if I was any good I wanted to find out and the only way you can find out is to put yourself out there and do the best job you can and at the time there's not necessarily a lot of support there's not a lot of people in your Corner cheering you on uh even now I have a hater who loves to click dislike on as many videos as they can I'm thankful for the hater as well their dedication to ha hating it's it's it's a obviously somebody who's not having an objective dislike it's for whatever reason they don't like what I'm doing they don't like me I don't know uh whenever you do anything in life you're going to have people who don't like what you do and you're just going to have to deal with that um don't let it set you back but um you know uh RIT Vic actually started my Discord server I didn't know anything about Discord I didn't even know it had a community like you could do talking I knew it was for gaming like playing video games and talking and there I was once on Discord a long time ago when I played video games and uh he offered to set up my Discord server in February 2021 and so for free he just did it of his own as a voluntary act to tell me thank you for the effort that I put in to make making the channel and um you know that's the thing I wanted to do as well I can't teach everyone for free this is what I do for a living so uh I launched a business off of this channel I did not I was working for someone else before and I still do contract work for that employer but now I can mostly work for myself and again why why why am I able to do that it's again because of your support because of you watching your likes your comments um that that you you've you've validated that and then people reached out to me they asked do you teach privately and at the time I didn't so it wasn't until uh the fall of 2021 that I launched the business maybe it was 2020 I can't remember off top of my head one of the two I I decided to start teaching on my own and um I believe it was 2021 so 2021 2020 no actually it would be yeah fall December of 2020 a year after the channel started I I launched the beauty of math Incorporated and um that was only a result of again your willingness to learn from me um and and so again thank you uh for for all of that uh RIT Vic started the Discord server again he's got his own I'll put a invite link or if he leaves me one I'll put it in the description as well um but I I I know what it's like to not have access to resources I never had private tutoring in my life ever I went to a couple tenant camps as a kid in the summertime that my mom you know uh paid for me to go to at a club but private tutoring of any kind I've I've never had and so if you're that kid and you don't have access to the resources that's another reason why I wanted to film Solutions I felt like the solutions on aops were a lot of times lacking they're lacking in the connective tissue between how they do an action but there's no explanation of why we know how to do that action and so I just saw that as an opportunity that maybe I could help explain those kinds of things and problems the connective thought ideas that allow you to process how we went from reading the problem to the completion of the problem and it's not magic there's little things within there that trigger certain aspects of our thinking process and so I think that I guess I must have succeeded in that endeavor and um you know again all of your likes all of your comments all of your support all of your views it's uh I just have nothing but gratitude for that you've given me an identity that I wouldn't otherwise have so that's all I've got you guys have a good one I hope that you enjoyed your Thanksgiving and I'll get back to filming as soon as I can

Channel: TheBeautyofMath

Views: 1,440

Keywords: AMC10, AMC12, AIME, Competition Math, AOPS, MathCounts, Math, Mathematics, AMC 10, AMC 12, AMC 8, Math Kangaroo

Id: v9SUQgCYDwo

Length: 31min 19sec (1879 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 29 2023