What is percentile in excel

Percentile is a statistics metric is that is often used when working with data.

It gives you an idea of where a value lies in the dataset (i.e., its position/rank in the dataset).

In practical life, I have seen the percentile value being used in competitive exams, where on the given score, you get the percentile value. This tells you where you stand in comparison to all the other people who appeared for that exam.

In this tutorial, I will explain everything you need to know about the percentile function in Excel, and show you examples of how to calculate the 90th percentile or 50th percentile in Excel.

So let’s get started!

What is Percentile? An Easy Explanation!

Percentile value tells you the relative position of a data point in the whole dataset.

For example, if I have the scores of 100 students and I tell you that the 90th percentile score is 84, it means that if anyone scores 84, then their score would be above 90% of the students.

Similarly, if the 50th percentile value for a dataset is 60, it means that anyone who got a score of 60 has about 50% of the people with better scores and about 50% of the people with a lesser score.

This is a preferred method as it’s more meaningful than just giving the score.

For example, if I tell you that your score is 90, it doesn’t tell you where you stand relative to the others. But if I tell you that your score’s percentile is 90th, you immediately know that you have done better than 90% of the people who took the exam.

Calculating the percentile value in Excel is very easy as it has some inbuilt functions to do this.

PERCENTILE Functions in Excel

There are three variations of the percentile function available in Excel. If you’re using Excel 2010 or versions after that, you will have access to all these three functions.

• PERCENTILE – this is old function that is now kept for backward compatibility purposes. You can use this, but it’s best to use the new ones (if you have those in your version of Excel). The result of this function is a value between 0 and 1
• PERCENTILE.INC – this is the new formula (which works exactly like the PERCENTILE function). In most cases, this is the function you would need to use. The result of this function is a value between 0 and 1
• PERCENTILE.EXC – this also works like the PERCENTILE.INC function with one difference – the result of this function will be a value between 0 and 1, but excludes K values between 0 to 1/(N+1) as well as N/(N+1) to 1 (where N is the size of the sample)

To put it simply, use PERCENTILE.INC in most cases (and if you are using Excel 2007 or prior versions, use PERCENTILE function)

Below is the syntax of the PERCENTILE.INC function in Excel:

 =PERCENTILE.INC(array,k)

where:

1. array is the range of cells where you have the values for which you want to find out the K-th percentile
2. k is the value between 0 and 1, and gives you the k-th percentile value. For example, if you want to calculate 90th percentile value, this would be 0.9 or 90%, and for 50th percntile value, this would be 0.5 or 50%

The syntax remains the same for the PERCENTILE and PERCENTILE.EXC functions.

Calculating 90th Percentile in Excel (or 50th Percentile)

Suppose you have a dataset as shown below and you want to know the 90th percentile value for this dataset.

Below is the formula that will give you the 90th Percentile:

=PERCENTILE.INC(A2:A21,90%)

In the above formula, I have used 90% as the k value. You can also use 0.9 to get the 90th percentile.

The result of this formula tells me that 90% of the values in this dataset lies below 95.3

Also, note that you don’t need to have the data sorted for this formula to work. Sorting and giving you the final result is something PERCENTILE function automatically does in the backend.

Similarly. in case you want to calculate the 50th percentile, you can use the formula below:

=PERCENTILE.INC(A2:A21,50%)

PERCENTILE.INC vs PERCENTILE.EXC – What’s the Difference?

Now, if you’re wondering why there are two separate percentile functions in Excel, let me try and explain.

When you use PERCENTILE.INC function, it would calculate the result while including the first and last value in the dataset. And if you want to exclude the first and the last value from the calculation, you need to use the PERCENTILE.EXC function.

In most cases, you will be required to use the PERCENTILE.INC function only.

But since we are talking about the difference between the two functions, let me try and show you the difference with an example.

Suppose you have the dataset as shown below where I have calculated different percentile values (in column C) using both PERCENTILE.INC and PERCENTILE.EXC.

As you can see, apart from getting different results, the PERCENTILE.EXC function would return a #NUM! error when I try to calculate the percentile value for 0 or 100%

In fact, PERCENTILE.EXC would give you an error for any value between:

• 0 and 1/(N+1)
• N/(N+1) and 1

where N is the total number of data points in the dataset (10 in this example)

So it would give the NUM error for any Kth values that lie between 0 and 1/11 or 10/11 and 1.

So it’s good to have the PERCENTILE.EXC function, but in most cases, you can just go ahead and use the PERCENTILE or the PERCENTILE.INC function.

I hope you found this tutorial useful!

Other Excel tutorials you may also like:

• Calculate Percentage Change in Excel (% Increase/Decrease Formula)
• How to Make a Bell Curve in Excel (Step-by-step Guide)
• How to Calculate and Format Percentages in Excel
• How to Calculate Standard Deviation in Excel (Step-by-Step)
• How to Rank within Groups in Excel
• How to Get Descriptive Statistics in Excel?

How to Use Excel to Find Percentiles

1. Open a new Microsoft Excel 2010 worksheet.
2. Click on cell “A1” and enter the values in your data set into the cells in column A.
3. Click on cell “B1.”
4. Enter the following formula into the cell, excluding quotes: “=PERCENTILE.
5. Press “Enter” to complete your formula.

How do I calculate a percentile in Excel?

Calculate rank percentile in Excel
To calculate the rank percentile of a list data, you can use a formula. Select a blank cell that you will place the rank percentile at, type this formula =RANK. EQ(B2,$B$2:$B$9,1)/COUNT($B$2:$B$9), press Enter key and drag fill handle down to calculate all rank percentiles.

How do I calculate 95th percentile in Excel?

We incorporate this function in a formula, the general formula, therefore, will be; =PERCENTILE (B2: B10, 0.95). Since our data set has ten cells, we are going to find the percentile from cell B2 to cell B10. We are using 0.95 because the whole data set is 100% and 95 divided by 100 is 0.95.

How do you find the 25th percentile in Excel?

The QUARTILE function syntax has the following arguments: Array Required. The array or cell range of numeric values for which you want the quartile value.
Syntax.

How do you use percentiles?

Percentiles are commonly used to report scores in tests, like the SAT, GRE and LSAT. for example, the 70th percentile on the 2013 GRE was 156. That means if you scored 156 on the exam, your score was better than 70 percent of test takers. The 25th percentile is also called the first quartile.

How do you calculate the 75th percentile?

The interquartile range of a set of scores is the difference between the third and first quartile – that is, the difference between the 75th and 25th percentiles. The 75th percentile is between 78 and 86, so, if 41 is subtracted from those numbers, the upper and lower bounds of the 25th percentile can be found.

How do you find the 35th percentile in Excel?

Enter the following formula into the cell, excluding quotes: “=PERCENTILE. EXC(A1:AX,k)” where “X” is the last row in column “A” where you have entered data, and “k” is the percentile value you are looking for.

What is the formula to calculate percentile?

Hence, the percentile formula is:

1. Percentile = (n/N) × 100.
2. Percentile = (Number of Values Below “x” / Total Number of Values) × 100.
3. Example 1: The scores obtained by 10 students are 38, 47, 49, 58, 60, 65, 70, 79, 80, 92.
4. Solution:

How is percentile calculated?

Percentile is calculated by the ratio of the number of values below ‘x’ to the total number of values. The kth percentile is a value in a data set that divides the data into two parts. The lower part contains k percent of the data, and the upper part contains the rest of the data.

What is the 90th percentile?

90th percentile means that you are or something is ahead of the 90% of the sample space. For example after giving a test you get to know that you have scored 92.36% percentile. It means simply that you are above 92.36% people or students who attended the examination.

What is percentile example?

A percentile is a comparison score between a particular score and the scores of the rest of a group. It shows the percentage of scores that a particular score surpassed. For example, if you score 75 points on a test, and are ranked in the 85 ^th percentile, it means that the score 75 is higher than 85% of the scores.

What is the 25th percentile?

25th Percentile – Also known as the first, or lower, quartile. The 25th percentile is the value at which 25% of the answers lie below that value, and 75% of the answers lie above that value. 50th Percentile – Also known as the Median.Half of the answers lie below the median and half lie above the median.

What is the 99 percentile?

To score 99 percentile means that there are about 99 percent of people( who appeared for the test )who have scored less than you,that means you are in the top one percent of students who have scored great .

What is the 65th percentile?

If 65% of the scores were below yours, then your score would be the 65th percentile.Using the 65th percentile as an example, the 65th percentile can be defined as the lowest score that is greater than 65% of the scores.

What is difference between percentage and percentile?

The key difference between percentage and percentile is the percentage is a mathematical value presented out of 100 and percentile is the per cent of values below a specific value. The percentage is a means of comparing quantities. A percentile is used to display position or rank.

Is 10th percentile good?

Percentiles are best explained through examples.If a candidate scores in the 90th percentile, they have scored higher than 90% of the norm group, putting them in the top 10%. If a candidate scores in the 10th percentile, they have scored higher than 10% of the norm group, putting them in the bottom 10%.

What is the 100th percentile?

The 100th percentile is defined to be the largest value in the list, which is 50. So the 5th, 30th, 40th, 50th and 100th percentiles of the ordered list {15, 20, 35, 40, 50} using the nearest-rank method are {15, 20, 20, 35, 50}.

What is 10th percentile salary?

A. A percentile is the point at or below which a given percentage of respondents fall. For example, the 10th percentile is the value at or below which 10 percent of the respondents fall—a 10th percentile salary of $80,000 means that 10 percent of all the respondents in that category will make $80,000 or less.