Percentile Definition

The term percentile forms an integral part of the enormous number of concepts that group the mathTherefore, it turns out to be of common and frequent use within the mentioned field and in the lexicon of those who are dedicated to the study and teaching of it.

The percentile is ceach of the ninety-nine segments that result from dividing something into one hundred parts of equal frequency.

It is represented by the capital letter P.

When we refer to a specific percentile, it will be the value of the variable to be observed and that is below the percentage that has been given. Thus, P20 will be the score that will be attributed when it is below 20% of the ordered values ​​that have been found.

The easiest method to calculate the percentile is as follows: x = n*i/100. In this formula, the lowercase letter n represents the number of elements in the sample, while the lowercase letter i will be the percentile. After carrying out this operation, a real number will be obtained with an integer part, which will be called E, and a decimal part, which will be called D.

One of the most frequent uses given to the percentile is when it comes to satisfying the need to obtain specific data regarding certain issues that make a deeper knowledge of a society or community, for example, you want to evaluate the growth of the children, then, the pediatricians will base their evaluation precisely on percentile tables to carry out the aforementioned evaluation; They will then be inspired by different percentile tables depending on whether they are women or men, with average values, depending on age and the corresponding country. The most used are those of weight, height and cranial perimeter.

In the mentioned lines several lines will appear, each one with a number, for example, 3, 10, 25, 30, 75, 90, 97. Half of the children of the same age are in the 50th percentile, meanwhile, 25% are above that level and the other 25% below. All the lines will correspond to normal values. If there is a child in the 45th percentile of height, it will be interpreted as follows: out of one hundred healthy boys of his age, 55 are taller than him and 45 are shorter.