To be mathematically literate means to be able to think critically about societal issues on which mathematics has bearing so as to make informed decisions about how to solve these problems. Dealing with such complex problems through interdisciplinary approaches, mirroring real-world problems requires innovative ways of planning and organizing mathematical teaching methods. Navigating our world means being able to quantify, measure, estimate, classify, compare, find patterns, conjecture, justify, prove, and generalize within critical thinking and when using critical thinking. Therefore, making decisions, even qualitatively, is not possible without using mathematics and critical thinking. Thus, teaching mathematics should be done in interaction with critical thinking along with a decision-making process. They can be developed into the mathematical context, so that there is no excuse to not explicitly support students to develop them.

Imagine that your usually stingy friend delights in buying you a Christmas present after taking a generosity booster. How would you feel? Undoubtedly, there is something praiseworthy about the action. You'd be pleased to receive the gift. You'd say ‘thank you', and mean it. But his change of heart is not entirely satisfying. According to Zagzebski, an American philosopher, he is not really generous. When we praise someone's character, we use words for various virtues: ‘generous', ‘kind', ‘courageous', etc. A person who gives one gift isn't generous. Instead, generosity is a stable part of a person's ‘moral identity', an emotional habit that is part of who you are. Thus virtues, as opposed to nontypical impulse, are the result of your personal history. They are part of who you are, as they are part of how your character was formed. Instant virtue is therefore impossible. Popping a pill cannot make you a better person.

To determine the mass of my bowling ball, I might put it onto a balance and compare it with a known mass, such as a number of metal cubes each weighing 1, 10, or 100 grams. Things get much more complicated if I want to know the mass of a distant star. How do I measure it? We can roughly say that measuring the mass of a star involves various theories. If we want to measure the mass of a binary star, we first determine a center of mass between the two stars, then their distance from that center which we can then use, together with a value for the period and a certain instance of Kepler's Third Law, to calculate the mass. In other words, in order to "measure" the star mass, we measure other quantities and use those values, together with certain equations, to calculate the mass. Measurement is not a simple and unmediated estimation of independently existing properties, but a determination of certain magnitudes before the background of a number of accepted theories.

Based on discoveries in neuroscience, pain and pleasure are formed and processed in the same area of the brain. Our bodies constantly strive for homeostasis, which is defined as the balance of bodily functions. Without the body's effective compensatory mechanisms, which may cushion potential highs and lows, we would not be capable of surviving. Pleasure and pain are like two sides of the same coin; they seem to work together and are heavily reliant on one another and keep balance. If you imagine pleasure and pain as the two opposite points on a scale, you can easily understand that as one of the two points rises, the other must correspondingly fall. We've all heard the expression, "No pain, no gain." Well, according to psychiatrist Dr. Anna Lembke, there may be some truth to these words. She says that our attempts to escape being miserable are in fact making us even more miserable. This is because pain is actually an essential component of our ability to maintain a neutral state, and allowing it will in turn reset our internal scale back to balance.

Manufacturers masterfully sow seeds of doubt about the adequacy of our current devices. Suddenly, the phone that was your lifeline a year ago is now a museum piece, unable to keep pace with your digital demands. And thus, the itch to upgrade begins, often before there's a genuine need. This cycle isn't just confined to our digital companions. It spills over into almost every aspect of consumer electronics, from the self-driving car to the smart fridge. Every product seems to be on an unstoppable march towards the next version, the next generation that promises to revolutionize your life. What's fascinating, or perhaps disturbing, is the utter efficacy of this cycle in shaping our desires. It's not so much that we want the newest device; we're led to believe we need it. The distinction between want and need blurs, shifting our financial priorities in favor of staying current with trends. For all the logical arguments against this ceaseless upgrading, the temptation remains compelling.

Helen Suzman was an activist against apartheid, a racist political and social system in the Republic of South Africa. Suzman was born to Jewish immigrant parents in Germiston in the Union of South Africa in 1917. While working as a lecturer on economic history at Witwatersrand University, she joined the South African Institute of Race Relations. In 1953, she joined the United Party and was elected to Parliament, but when the United Party adopted a more moderate stance on apartheid, Suzman and other progressive members left it and formed the Progressive Party in 1959. Suzman tirelessly fought against apartheid, exposing the government's abuses and challenging its laws for a total of 36 years in Parliament. Even after her retirement in 1989, she continued to advocate for a multi-racial democracy in the Republic of South Africa and influenced the drafting of the country's new constitution after the end of apartheid. She remained an active voice for human rights and democracy until her death in 2009.

Conditioned Place Preference is a way of finding out what animals want. Researchers train them to associate one place with an experience such as food or a loud noise and another place with something completely different, usually where nothing happens. The two places are made obviously different to make it as easy as possible for the animal to associate each place with what happened to it there. The animal's preference for being in one place or another is measured both before and after its experiences in the two places. If there is a shift in where the animal chooses to spend its time for the reward, this suggests that it liked the experience and is trying to repeat it. Conversely, if it now avoids the place the stimulus appeared and starts to prefer the place it did not experience it, then this suggests that it found the stimulus unpleasant. For example, mice with cancer show a preference for the place where they have given morphine, a drug used to relieve pain, rather than where they have received saline whereas healthy mice developed no such preference. This suggests that the mice with cancer wanted the morphine.