Math Madness
"And today's lesson will be about math! Aren't you excited, Rainbow!?" Twilight asked the rainbow-maned pegasus sitting in the middle of the room.
Rainbow slowly raised an eyebrow and stared blankly into Twilight's eyes for a few seconds before replying. "Do you really think I would be excited to learn math? You know I hate math. I'm only here because you're forcing me to be here. I don't know why I'm the only pony that has to learn this stuff." Rainbow was getting frustrated about learning things. All she wanted to do was fly around town and be free.
Twilight let out a soft sigh. "Rainbow, every other pony passed their math classes in school. You're lucky you were still able to graduate school without passing math."
"Well, it's not my fault math is so hard." Rainbow was starting to go on the defensive since Twilight brought up the fact that she failed math.
Twilight gave Rainbow a small reassuring smile. "Rainbow, math isn't hard. Just pay attention while I teach you, and it will be a piece of cake."
"I'd rather have a piece of cake than to learn how to find x."
Twilight rolled her eyes and turned around to face the chalk board. "Anyways, we will start with lesson one. In my opinion, this is the easiest math lesson I'll be teaching you." Twilight then reconsidered her choice of words at the thought of it. "Actually, it's the easiest lesson. That's just a fact. What you will be learning is how to convert a percent into a decimal."
This made Rainbow throw her head back with a loud groan. "Awwww, come on, Twilight. That's too hard. I didn't even pay attention on how to do that because there's no point."
Twilight didn't even bother to look back when speaking as she picked up the chalk with her magic. "Well, I wouldn't be surprised if you weren't paying attention and found it hard because of that."
"Whatever."
"Rainbow, this is literally the easiest thing I'm teaching you. Listen and watch me teach this skill to you for just one minute and you'll be glad it's over."
"Fine."
Rainbow closed her eyes to relax her brain for a moment before opening them to the sound of Twilight's voice. What she saw was "25%" on the board.
"Alright, when you see a problem like this and need to convert it into a decimal, you start where the decimal is and move two places to the left."
Twilight quickly did the problem and turned around to face the cyan pegasus. "What you see now is .25 which is the decimal form of 25%. Any questions?"
Rainbow stayed silent and slowly shook her head. She was so bored that she couldn't even try to pay attention.
"Good, next problem."
Twilight quickly wrote up another problem on the board. She wrote "6%" on the second half of the board and turned.
"All right. We are going to use the same rule. We always move the decimal two places to the left to get the decimal form of any percent. When there is no decimal seen, it's always at the furthest right."
Twilight did the problem again in no time and showed Rainbow. "The decimal of 6% is .06 because you move the decimal two places to the left. Any questions?"
"Twilight, are we done? I'm so bored out of my mind that I'm thinking about just flying out of here." Rainbow was just about done with learning about math. She was an athlete and wanted to fly or sleep on a cloud.
"I'll let you go if you can answer two problems on your own," Twilight said confidently as she wrote out two more problems on the board.
"Your first problem is to convert 3% to a decimal. Your second problem is to convert 73.7% to a decimal. If you can do these two problems correctly, I'll let you go on your way."
"Great!" Rainbow replied with an excited tone.
"Okay, so let's start with number one. Convert 3% to a decimal. Use the same rules and apply it to these two problems."
Rainbow thought for a while on how she was going to get the answer to the first problem. She kept thinking until she realized that there was no point. She let out another groan and threw a fit. "Ugg, Twilight, this is so useless. I'd rather you teach me a different one. This is too hard."
Twilight smirked and raised an eyebrow. "Would you rather me teach you how to do logarithms?"
If Rainbow could be anymore confused, she would be. "Loga what?"
"Logarithms is another math topic. I could teach you that instead of percent and decimals."
"I don't want to learn anything about math. When are we going to use math in our lives? Am I really going to have to solve for x in order to not get a disease going through my body? Am I really going to have to graph a function to buy a house?"
"That won't be the first time I've heard something like that."
The cyan pegasus got up and tried flying out of the window. Twilight was quickly able to react and grab her with her magic. She pulled her towards her and wrapped her hooves around her in a tight hug. "Rainbow, I just want the best for you. I'm not doing this to be annoying or for you to hate me. I just want to help you through life."
The athletic pegasus sighed and returned the hug. "Sorry for throwing a rant, Twi. I just find math irritating and stressful. I guess I do with all school-related things. No wonder nopony wants to love me."
"Aww, don't say that. I love you." Twilight's eyes lit up at what she just said. She just confessed her love for Rainbow. This caused Rainbow to smile, though.
"Really? I thought you'd never say that. I love you too, egghead."
"Wait, you do?"