Yes! It is everywhere.

When I am not working in the field of math education, I am spending time with my wife and son. One of our favorite things to do is to explore while hiking and camping.

This past November we traveled with friends through northern Nevada and Arizona and were fortunate enough to see Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada, The Vermillion Cliffs National Monument, and Wupatki National Monument. These areas were a reminder of the wonderful power of nature, the resilience of humans, and that we live on the stolen lands of the First People that came before us.

Here you can see amazing pictographs from the Valley of Fire State Park and the evidence of the rich culture of the First Peoples of this region. Sadly, you can also see the damage done by visitors of this site.

You might be wondering where the mathematics is in this. I would argue that is because our mathematics culture in the United States erroneously equates only calculations with mathematics. We have to shift that narrative.

Mathematics is embedded in all that we do. It is the unspoken language that helps us makes sense of our world and cultures that came long before us have made amazing mathematical achievements that I am still striving to learn more about. We make sense of our world through scaled/proportional drawings such as those in these pictures. We mathematize our world when we think of group size and how that relates to our own health, welfare, and comfort. You could consider this looking at this picture of Big Horn Sheep below that wandered through our campground. In a different time one of these could have provided food for a community. Consider how much food, for how many people, and for how long.

We can mathematize a beautiful scene such as the bridge with a backdrop of the Colorado River just west of the Navajo Territory in Eastern Arizona that you can see below.

Finally we can consider area of a living space, location, storage of food stuffs, and conditions that may have contributed to life span when we explore the ruins seen below from Wupatki National Monument or the Pueblo Bench Archeological site in The Vermillion Cliffs National Monument.

Mathematics is all around us. It is in our histories, our communities, our stories, and our interactions with these things. Look for it, help others see it, and our world becomes a better place.

I hope you all have a joyous end to 2022 and I will write more in the new year!