Percentile:

Measures of Location
WK04-LAS1-SAP-II-11
Learning Objective(s):
• At the end of the lesson, the student
shall be able to find the location of a
value using percentile measure.
Distribution of scores in a 50-item long test of
150 Grade 11 students of a nearby Senior High
School
1. What is the highest score? Lowest
score?

2. What is the most frequent score?

3. What is the median score?

4. What is the average or mean score?

1. What is the highest score? Lowest score?
Answer: Highest score is 50 while the lowest is 10.
2. What is the most frequent score?
Answer: Most frequent score is 38 which is the score of
28 students.
3. What is the median score?
Answer: The median score is 33 which implies that 50% of
the students or around 75 students have score at most 33.
4. What is the average or mean score?
Answer: On the average, the students got 32.04667 or
32 (rounded off) out of 50 items correctly.
Questions could be answered by knowing other
measures of location:

1. What is the score where at most 75% of the 150

students scored less or equal to it?

2. Do you think the long test is easy since 75 students

have scores at most 33 out of 50?

3. Do you need to be alarmed when 10% of the class got

a
score of at most 20 out of 50?
 Measures of Location: Maximum, Minimum, Percentiles,
Deciles and Quatiles

Percentile is a measure that pinpoints a location

that
divides distribution into 100 equal parts.

It is usually represented by Pj, that value which

separates the bottom j% of the distribution from
the top (100-j)%.
 It is usually represented by Pj, that value which separates
the
bottom j% of the distribution from the top (100-j)%.

- P30 is the value that separates the bottom 30% of the

distribution to the top 70%

- we say 30% of the total number of observations in the

data set are said to be less than or equal to P30 while the
remaining 70% have values greater than P30.
Steps in finding the jth percentile (Pj)
Step 1: Arrange the data values in ascending order
of magnitude.
Step 2: Find the location of Pj in the arranged list by
computing L = (j/100) x N, where N is the total number
of observations in the data set.
Step 3:
a.If L is a whole number, then Pj is the mean or average
of the values in the Lth and (L+1)th positions.
b. If L is not a whole number, then Pj is the value of the
next
higher position.
Example
Distribution of scores in a 50-item long test of
2 150 Grade 11 students of a nearby Senior High School
 Distribution of scores in a 50-item long test of
Example 150 Grade 11 students of a nearby Senior High
2 School
Step 1: Arrange the data values in ascending order
of magnitude.
To find P30 we note that j =
30
Step 2: Find the location of Pj in the arranged list by
computing L = (j/100) x N, where N is the total number
of observations in the data set.
Example Distribution of scores in a 50-item long test of
150 Grade 11 students of a nearby Senior High
2Step 3: School
a.If L is a whole number, then Pj is the mean or average of the values
in the Lth and (L+1)th positions.
b.If L is not a whole number, then Pj is the value of the next
higher position.
 45 is a whole number and thus we follow the first rule
 the average or mean of the values found in the 45th
and 46th
positions, which are both 25
 the bottom 30% of the scores are said to be less than
or equal to 25
 while the top 70% of the observations (which is
Example Distribution of scores in a 50-item long test of
2 150 Grade 11 students of a nearby Senior High School
Learning
Experience
A businesswoman is planning to have a
restaurant in the university belt. She wants to
study the weekly food allowance of the
students in order to plan her pricing strategy
for the different menus she is going to offer.
She asked 213 students and gathered the
following data:
1. Determine the weekly food allowance
where 60% of the students have at most.

2. If the business woman wanted to have at

least 50% of the students could afford to eat
in her restaurant, what should be the
minimum total cost of the meals that the
student could have in a week?