9th Annual Richard & Louise Guy Lecture: Edward Doolittle

One sometimes hears that the indigenous peoples of the Americas are for some reason not predisposed to be able to do mathematics.  This belief is surprising, since the mathematical traditions of the Western Hemisphere prior to European contact were already rich and extensive.  This talk will focus on some of those traditions, primarily Central American but with some information about mathematical traditions in Algonkian cultures such as the Blackfoot, which the speaker learned in part from elders in a workshop held every several years in Banff in which he and Professor Guy participate. Almost all of this talk will be accessible to any interested listener, with perhaps five minutes in the middle using a small amount of very elementary number theory.  Along the way any listener who has ever eaten an 18 Rabbits granola bar will learn why doing so celebrates indigenous mathematics.