A number corresponding to a score or measure, that is the percentage of the same measure that the score equals or exceeds.
One of 100 divisions into which a group of scores is ranked, such as children’s scores from a standardized test; the particular division into which the child’s score falls is often the reported score for the test. The percentile indicates the percentage of people doing less well on the test, rather than the actual number or percentage of questions answered correctly. If a child scores in the 79th percentile, for example, that means that he or she did better than 79 percent of all the students who took the test during its development and standardizing. The decile operates on the same principle but has divisions from 1 to 10, while a stanine runs from 1 to 9 and a quartile from 1 to 4 (often simply called quarters). Among the many children’s tests that commonly use percentiles are the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence (WPPSI), the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, Revised (WISC- R), and Metropolitan Achievement Tests.
The size or magnitude of that element, in a series of elements that are arranged in order of magnitude, whose location in the series is at the designated percentage of the way from the small end of the series to the large end. For example, the 50th percentile is the magnitude of the element that is 50 percent of the way through the series—namely, the magnitude of the middle element, if the series has an odd number of elements. (Thus the 50th percentile is the same as the median).
One of 100 equal divisions of a series of items or data. Thus if a value such as a test score is higher than 92% of all the other test scores, that result is above the 92nd percentile of the range of scores.