Percentage

Have you ever had to share a big, yummy pizza with your family, or a bag of colorful candy with a friend. You look at all the pieces and you want to make sure everyone gets a fair share, right. Or maybe you’ve looked at your parent’s phone and seen the little number next to the battery that shows how much power is left. That number tells you if you have lots of time to play a game or if it needs to be charged soon. I am the secret helper in all of those moments. I am a special way of talking about a piece of a whole thing, and I make big ideas and big numbers easy to understand. I help you know exactly how much of something you have, whether it’s a slice of pizza or battery power for a cartoon. Hello. I'm Percentage.

Let’s travel way back in time, long before there were cars, computers, or even lightbulbs. Imagine a busy place with big stone buildings and people wearing long robes called togas. This place was called Ancient Rome. I was born there because the leaders of the city needed a fair way to collect money, which they called taxes, to help pay for roads and buildings. It was a big puzzle. How could they be fair to everyone. They came up with a brilliant idea. The emperor said, 'For every 100 coins a person earns, they will give just one coin to the city.' That was me. I was the one coin out of every hundred. They had a special name for me in their language, Latin. They called me 'per centum,' which means 'for every hundred.' It was such a good idea that it started to spread all over the world. After many, many years, people decided they needed a quicker way to write me down. So they invented a special symbol that looks like a sleepy number one with two little zeros, one on top and one on the bottom. It’s my own special sign: %.

Now, I'm all grown up and I am everywhere you look. When you see that your tablet has 100% battery, that’s me telling you it’s completely full and ready for fun and games. When you go with your family to a store and see a big red sign that says '50% off,' I'm there to tell you that you only have to pay half the price for that cool toy or sparkly shirt. What a deal. I even help the meteorologists, the people who study the weather, tell you if you might need an umbrella. When they say there's a '30% chance of showers,' I'm helping you know that it might rain a little bit. I love helping you understand your world, from showing you how well you did on a spelling test to telling you how much strawberry flavor is in your yogurt. Whenever you see my little % sign, you know I'm there to help you see all the special parts that make up one big, wonderful whole.