Percentiles

A percentile is the value of a variable below which a certain percent of observations fall. So the 20th
percentile is the value (or score) below which 20 percent of the observations may be found. There is no
standard definition of percentile.

One definition, usually given in texts, is that the p-th percentile of N ordered values is obtained by first

calculating the rank , rounding to the nearest integer, and taking the value that
corresponds to that rank.

Many software packages, use the following method to estimate the value, vp, of the pth percentile
of an ascending ordered dataset containing N elements with values v1,v2,...,vN;

n is then split into its integer component, k and decimal component, d, such that n = k + d. vp is
then calculated as:

An alternative method is as above, with n calculated as