Percentile: meaning, definitions and examples

Etymology

• The term 'percentile' comes from the combination of 'percent,' meaning out of 100, and the Latin suffix '-ile,' which denotes capability.
• First used in statistics in the 19th century, the concept helped in comparing different data sets effectively.
• In educational contexts, it became popular to assess student performance and compare it with peer groups.

Education

• Standardized tests often report results using percentiles to indicate how a student performed relative to others in their grade.
• For example, being in the 90th percentile means a student scored better than 90% of their peers.
• Percentiles can help identify areas for improvement by showing where a student stands within a broader context.

Statistics

• Percentiles are useful in descriptive statistics to summarize and describe large data sets.
• The 50th percentile is also known as the median, which divides a data set into two equal halves.
• Percentiles can be used in various fields, including business, sports, and health, to assess performance and trends.

Health

• In medicine, percentiles are often used to assess body measurements against growth standards for children.
• For example, a child's height in the 75th percentile means they are taller than 75% of peers their age, helping doctors track development.
• Percentile ranks can help identify potential health issues when growth falls below a certain threshold.

Technology

• Data science often employs percentiles for analyzing performance metrics, like response times in services and applications.
• Percentile analysis helps understand user engagement and can guide decisions in software development.
• In machine learning, percentiles are used to evaluate models and their predictions against real-world data.

With rank #15,735, this word belongs to specialized vocabulary. While not common in everyday speech, it enriches your ability to express complex ideas.

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