Richard Rusczyk Is a Math Evangelist Who Preaches Problem-Solving

When Richard Rusczyk was a middle school student, the contest problems looked very similar to the ones he was studying in his math classes. There were only the problems that he couldn't find a book to help with.

He couldn't solve a single problem in some of the more advanced contests he participated in. He was able to connect the dots and back out what was happening. He learned a lot of math but also a lot of problem-solving.

He saw classmates struggle in math classes even though they had gotten perfect scores. He said that their classroom experience taught them to memorize tricks. That doesn't work when you go to college.

They set out to write a book that would have been devoured by their 13 year old selves. Unless you have been much more fortunate than we were, this book is unlike anything you have used before, that's what the opening paragraph of the series says. The books sold 2000 copies a year to cover rent. Over 100,000 math enthusiasts have bought copies of the book over the last three decades.

In addition to a large array of textbooks, Art of Problem Solving also offers online and in-person math classes for students who aspire to be problem solvers. The goal of these courses is to foster a problem-solving mentality. The goal is to bring the problem-solving mindset to more than just self-selected math lovers.

This mindset should be included in the curriculum. It shouldn't be the thing you do on Fridays.

Rusczyk andQuanta talked about how to turn math learners into problemsolvers. In the interest of full disclosure, our interviewer's child took AoPS classes and her sister taught AoPS summer camps online in the first year of the Pandemic. The interview has been edited to make it clearer.

Your Beast Academy textbooks are comics, and you introduce concepts through story. The characters are talking about their math homework on the school bus, or they’re in woodworking class, or they’re on a field trip. What made you choose that approach?

You can't talk to a third graders. There needs to be a back-and-forth. The comic book structure has little kid monsters talking to each other, parents, teachers, and different characters in the universe.

You can model exploration, overcoming challenges, and being ok with being wrong. The environment for the child can be created. Parents send in pictures of their children dressed up in costumes for Halloween. These spaces are being put into by them.

We spent a lot of time figuring out what our delivery mechanism is. We had 150 pages of the same thing. Someone said comic books, and another person said monsters. We got a great artist and began building the books.

The lessons you’re trying to teach seem to go far beyond any specific math content, or even specific problem-solving techniques.

The mindset of openness and willingness to engage with things we don't understand is one of the things we're trying to get across. Kids are naturally inclined to do this When it comes to math classes in elementary school, we teach that out of them.

The goal is to do everything perfectly, so we want kids to not lose their curiosity or get into a mindset where the goal is to do everything perfectly. We have machines for that right now. When we set kids up to compete with computers, we want them to fail because a computer can do better.

The kids have their strengths and weaknesses within the academy. There is a person that does crazy things that are sometimes not right but still insightful. There are a lot of characters that are organized. There is a character who is brilliant over time. Approaches to different types of problems are different.

This is how I learned to use numbers. It was a great way to study.

Two years was the amount of time it took me to get right on every test. That was hard to take. It was safe because it was a mathematics contest. It wasn't the first-year math class in college that thought, "I am not going to be able to do this, I am not going to be a scientist, I'm not going to be an engineer"

Our education system gives a lot of students that experience. When they get to college, they think they're not good enough because they've never experienced this before. They just haven't been prepared.

The problems should be shown first. It is possible for a student to discover math for themselves, instead of just being told it. They aren't always going to get there. Sometimes they will do it in a different way than we did. It is also great.

Your classes tend to attract kids who are already excited about math, and that in turn attracts teachers with strong math backgrounds. It’s one thing to make a system that works well for such enthusiastic and experienced participants, and another to make something that will work in classrooms everywhere. What challenges do you anticipate in scaling up your Beast Academy materials to a full curriculum?

The first thing we are doing is learning. We believe in some of the approaches we think should be taught to students. We are more than willing to discuss how to best deliver those resources to teachers and students in different environments.

I believe a lot of the problems in education are caused by technology companies going to schools and saying, "This is how you should do things" The most important delivery mechanism these kids will ever have is a partnership between the content providers and the teacher.

Two or three years ago, we began working with schools to use Beast Academy as a supplement. You really want to be the whole experience in order to reach more students and have a deeper impact on them.

A study was done in a school district. There were three groups of students: a group that passed the test, a group that didn't pass the test but were close, and a group that didn't pass the test but were close. They looked at the students performance on the Minnesota test and the number of lessons they did online. The students who did more than 150 or 200 lessons grew more quickly than the kids who did 15 or no lessons. The effect size was the biggest in the rising scholars group.

Who chose how many lessons kids did — the teachers, or the kids themselves?

I think it was during the Pandemic. The outliers are likely to be their own people. I don't think it matters whether the material teaches the kids or unlocks them. You need to give them something that makes them want to do it. For a lot of kids, getting them to a place where they are interested in struggling with something is the whole game.

There’s a lot of debate in educational circles about whether kids at both the high and the low end of performance are best served by being put on separate tracks or the same track. It sounds like you feel pretty strongly about giving extra challenge to kids who are ready for it.

We want to help students realize their potential by giving them the best materials. You don't give students the chance to realize their potential if you don't speak to them.

Advanced programs are removed for all students when they're removed. She will never know if there is a brilliant child. These are the highest-leverage people in terms of making medical and technological advances.

Students find their people when those experiences are created. Our online community is part of what we do. It is the only place where some students feel safe expressing a love of math and science because it is not part of their school culture.

When I went to a math competition for the first time, I was struck by the fact that there were other kids who liked math as much as I did, and adults who were excited about me being a good mathematician. They didn't need to be happy that I could do math. It was the first time I had seen that.

Math competitions can be great for kids who are naturally competitive, but that’s not all kids. What can we offer the other kids?

Competitions are one of the best ways to explore interest in math. Contests were the only game I played when I was a student.

The last 10 to 15 years have seen this become less true. The Eastern European tradition of professors working with the top students in their city has led to summer camps that are not contest focused.

Before I started Art of Problem Solving, I started a math circle. We had a Fields medal winner come give a talk. He was happy to be there and he was magnetic. He said, "Well, I'm here to do this because this is what people did for me when I was younger." I think I have the opposite answer. We didn't have this sort of stuff, so we're building them.

It seems like Beast Academy, the imaginary school in the comic books, is the kind of place you would have dreamed of attending as a kid. You’ve said that some kids dress up as their favorite Beast Academy monster for Halloween, but what about you? Is there a monster you especially identify with?

There are bits and pieces of different people. I may have identified with the math coach. She was strong in her younger days. She wants to help students become stronger than she was by sharing beautiful, interesting things.

How Transformers Seem to Mimic Parts of the Brain