What are Quartiles?

Similar to deciles, quartiles are a form of percentiles. While deciles split the data into 10
“buckets,” quartiles split them into quarters. A good way of remembering this is that “deci”
means a tenth, whereas quartile sounds similar to quarter, which is a fourth.

Splitting our data set into quarters, gives us the following.

Quartile Percentile Score

15
22
Quartile 1 25th 24
27
Quartile 2 32
50th
Quartile 2 36
40
Quartile 3 75th 41
50
90

 Which is easier to understand when visualized:

From the image above, we can see that each quartile, or “bucket” contains 25% of our
data. The score 24 is at the 25th percentile, which means that 25% of students scored
below this score. The reason why this is at the 25th percentile and not the 30th percentile
this time is because half of the score belongs to the first quartile and half belongs to the
second.

The second quartile is also known as the median, which, as we calculated earlier, is 34
points. Quartile 3 is the 75th percentile, which means that at 41 points, 25% students
scored above and 75% of students scored below this number.

The properties of quartiles are noted below.

Quartile Other names for this quartile Percentile equivalent

Q1
1st quartile 25th
Lower quartile
Q2
2nd quartile Middle quartile 50th
Median
Q3
3rd quartile 75th
Upper quartile
Q4
4th quartile 100th
Maximum
What are Deciles?

Deciles are a form of percentiles that split the data up into groups of 10%. Meaning, every
decile contains 10% of the data. To find the decile, first order the data from least to
greatest. Then, divide the data by 10. This indicates the number of observed values within
each decile.

 Using our previous example, we divide our data into 10 groups, each containing 10% of the
data. This can be visualized in the data above. Because our n is equal to 10, each decile
contains only 1 score.

The 1st decile = 15. This score, at the 1st decile, is at the 10th percentile. Meaning, 10% of
students scored below this number. This doesn’t really have much meaning here because
there’s only 1 value at the 1st decile - however, it can be interpreted for data sets with
larger sample sizes.

The 6th decile = 36. This score, at the 6th decile, is at the 60th percentile, meaning that
60% of students scored below this number.

 Problem 1: Finding Deciles and Percentiles

Using the first example, fill in the rest of the table with the corresponding deciles and
percentiles.

Decile Percentile Score

1st 10th 15
22
24
27
32
6th 60th 36
40
41
50
90

 
Solution to Problem 1

You should obtain the following result:

Decile Percentile Score

1st 10th 15
2nd 20th 22
3rd 30th 24
4th 40th 27
5th 50th 32
6th 60th 36
7th 70th 40
8th 80th 41
9th 90th 50
10th 100th 90

What are Percentiles?

The simple definition for a percentile is that it indicates the number at which a certain

percentage of data falls below. As you learned in previous sections, there are two types of
measurements in descriptive statistics: measures of central tendency and variability.

Percentiles are one version of measuring the variability within a data set. A percentile is

an important measure because it can help you understand a certain data set better than
simple means, modes or medians can.

The easiest way to understand why is to look at an example. You have a group of test
scores out of 100 points from a class, following the table below.

Observation Number Score

1 15
2 22
3 24
4 27
5 32
6 36
7 40
8 41
9 50
10 90
 You scored 50 points. At first glance, 50 out of 100 points may seem like a disappointing
grade - for many classes, it would also be considered at the point of failure. However,
calculating the percentile, you are at the 90th percentile. In other words, 90% of
students scored lower than you did.

To calculate the percentile, your data should be ordered from least to greatest, similar to
taking the median. Next, take the number for which you’d like to calculate the percentile
for, in our case 50, and count what position its in.

In this case, there are 8 students who scored below 50, which means our score is in the 9th

position. Next, you take the 9 and divide it by n, or our sample size. In this case,   =10.
So together, we have 90%. This tells us that, although 50 out of 100 points can seem like a
low score, you actually did better than 90% of the people in your class.

 Example 1: Finding the Percentile Value

You can be in a situation where you want to find the value corresponding to a certain
percentile. Taking our example above, you want to find the 70th percentile, or the score at
which 70% of students scored below.

To do this, we take

Percentile (in decimal form) * n = index

0.70 * 10 = 9
The index gives you the observation number for which your 70th percentile is
located. If it has a decimal, round to the nearest whole number. Here, the index 7
means that the 7th observation in our data set is the score at the 70th percentile.
Counting from the lowest to the highest score, we reach the 7th observed value: a
score of 40, which is the 70th percentile for our data.
If we wanted to find the median, we can also use percentiles. For odd numbers, the
n
median is:
2
= index. In this case, since we have an even amount of numbers, we
n n 10
take the average of two indices, index 1= , index 2= . Then we get = 5 and
2 2 2
10
+1= 6. Meaning the, the median is the average of the scores found at the fifth
2
34+36
and sixth values in our ordered data set, = 34 points. This means that 50% of
2
students scored below 34 points and the other 50% of students scored above 34
points.