He is a regular guest speaker at well-known companies, but he has never been invited by a school. — School principal Björn Gemmer wasn’t willing to let this statement by Germany’s most famous math YouTuber, Daniel Jung, in an article in Deutsche Bahn’s customer magazine stand unchallenged. The school administration and Steinmühle management secured the “math rock star’s” agreement to give a talk at Steinmühle. On Wednesday evening, he filled the audience seats in the forum.

He doesn’t waste time with long introductions in his videos. Daniel Jung gets right to the point—and that’s exactly what his well over 600,000 followers seem to love. It’s not about beauty, fashion, or fitness like it is for countless other YouTubers. Daniel Jung’s passion is—mathematics! Laughter fills the hall as the speaker on the Steinmühlen stage mimics the way he steps into the frame in front of the camera in his videos—and then steps back out again. That’s how many people who search the internet for solutions to math problems—and find them—know him.

Born in Remscheid in 1981, Jung has compiled over 2,200 explanatory videos covering topics such as stochastics, systems of linear equations, and other mathematical problems that give many high school and college students a hard time. The videos, each just a few minutes long, are a huge hit on YouTube. His videos have already been viewed over 200 million times. The thank-you comments under his videos speak for themselves. “Oh my God, you saved my butt on my final exams,” one comment reads, for example. Or: “I learned more from you in 60 seconds than I did in half a year of math class.”

Breaking Down a Generational Conflict

Yet this eloquent man in his late thirties, who studied math and sports but ultimately did not pursue a teaching career in the traditional school setting, does not see himself as competition for schools, but rather as a complement: “We need the structured school environment, ‘but people aren’t built for 45 minutes of high-pressure learning.’” In addition, it has been proven that an individual teacher can achieve more than group instruction. And: “My material is accessible from anywhere, at any time.” Daniel Jung, who, among other things, contributes to the platform mathefragen.de and founded the Daniel Jung Academy, sees himself as an entrepreneur. His goal is to decipher “new learning,” break down a generational divide, and make it clear: “It’s not just thick books that can impart knowledge—the internet can, too.”
With his approach—projected powerfully onto the Forum’s screen—Jung delivers a thunderclap: “The way we teach and learn is at a turning point unlike any we’ve seen in a thousand years.” Even statements from dissenters—who demonized educational videos by claiming they were to school learning what Amazon is to retail—did nothing to change this. “We should meet young people where they already are—namely, on the internet,” said the speaker.
He therefore encouraged students and teachers to use the Internet to share interesting content: “Share your knowledge with the world. It’s fun to help others.”