percentile, a number denoting the position of a data point within a numeric dataset by indicating the percentage of the dataset with a lesser value. For example, a data point that falls at the 80th percentile has a value greater than 80 percent of the data points within the dataset. Percentiles are frequently used when reporting on data, particularly in standardized testing, where a raw score may be less meaningful to educators and students than a percentile score.
Percentiles are calculated by dividing an ordered set of data into 100 equal parts. However, the precise method of calculation differs across institutions and statistical software packages. In some cases, percentiles are defined as the points that divide the data. Because 99 divisions are needed to do this, percentiles are generally numbered 1 through 99. In other cases, the 0th percentile is defined as the minimum point in the data and the 100th percentile as the maximum. However, some methods define percentiles as ranges representing divisions of the data so that a data point would be “in” a given percentile rather than at, above, or below it. In such cases, the 99th percentile is typically the highest, representing the top 1 percent of data points, while the bottom 1 percent fall into the 0th percentile.
One common way to calculate percentiles is to use index values for the data points in a set. If a set is ordered from least to greatest, the lowest value is index 1, the next lowest value is index 2, and so on. To find the index value i for a particular percentile p, divide p by 100 and multiply the result by the number of values n in your dataset plus 1. That is, i = p/100(n + 1).If i is an integer, then the pth percentile is found at index i. If i is not an integer, the pth percentile is found by taking the mean of the values at indexes i and i + 1.
Some percentiles are commonly given special significance in statistics and data analysis. The 50th percentile is the median, or central value, of a dataset, where half of all data points fall below the value. The median is also called the second quartile. A quartile is similar to a percentile, except that instead of dividing the dataset by percent values (hundredths), it divides it by quarters (fourths). The first (or lower) quartile falls at the 25th percentile, the second quartile (or median) falls at the 50th percentile, and the third (or upper) quartile falls at the 75th percentile.
Quartiles are often included in a “five-number summary” to help describe the distribution of a dataset. The five numbers are the minimum value, the first quartile, the second quartile (median), the third quartile, and the maximum value in the dataset. For example, to show how the daily high temperature varies over the course of a year in a particular city, daily temperature observations can be taken for the year and put in order from lowest to highest. The minimum is the lowest observation. The maximum is the highest observation. The median value falls in the middle, at the 50th percentile; if there are 365 observations, this is the 183rd warmest day of the year. The first quartile is directly between the minimum and the median, at the 25th percentile, or the 92nd warmest day. Finally, the third quartile is at the 75th percentile, or the 274th warmest day. The result may look something like this:
| quartile | percentile | temperature in °C (°F) |
|---|---|---|
| minimum | lowest observation | −8 °C (18 °F) |
| first quartile | 25th percentile | 3 °C (37 °F) |
| median | 50th percentile | 18 °C (62 °F) |
| third quartile | 75th percentile | 27 °C (80 °F) |
| maximum | highest observation | 36 °C (97 °F) |
Percentiles help indicate where a given value falls within a distribution of data points (sometimes called observations). For a value at the nth percentile, n percent of all data points fall below that value, while (100 − n) percent of all data points are equal to or greater than that value. For example, suppose a school gives eighth-grade students a standardized test with scores on a scale of 0 to 300, and Mercedes receives a score of 230. Without knowing other students’ scores, she may not know if she did well on the test or not. Now suppose that the percentile is reported as well, and Mercedes sees that her score is at the 70th percentile. This lets her know that her score is higher than the scores of about 70 percent of other students but the same as or lower than the scores of 30 percent of other students.