The Excel PERCENTILE Function

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QUARTILE

Percentile

The k'th percentile of a range of data is the value that k% of the data values fall within.

This is explained in more detail on the Wikipedia Percentile page

PERCENTILE & PERCENTILE.INC Functions

In Excel 2010, the PERCENTILE function has been renamed the PERCENTILE.INC function.

Although it has been replaced, the Percentile function is still available in Excel 2010 (stored in the list of compatibility functions), to allow compatibility with earlier versions of Excel.

Basic Description

The Excel PERCENTILE function returns the k'th percentile of a supplied range of values for a given value of k.

The format of the function is :

PERCENTILE( array, k )

Where the function arguments are:

array	-	The range of data values for which you want to calculate the k'th percentile
k	-	The value (between 0 and 1) of the required percentile

Percentile Function Examples

The spreadsheets below show examples of the Excel Percentile function used to calculate the k'th percentile of a set of values in cells A1 - A6 of the sample spreadsheet, for different values of k.

The formulas for the functions are shown in the spreadsheet on the left, and the results are shown in the spreadsheet on the right.

Formulas:

Examples of use of the Excel Percentile Function

Results:

Note that in the above examples:

The value of k can be input as a decimal or a percentage - for example, value 0.2 in cell B1, is the same as 20%, - the 20th percentile
The 50th percentile (see cell B3) falls between the values of 3 and 4. Therefore, Excel has interpolated, to produce the result 3.5

For further examples of the Excel Percentile function, see the Microsoft Office website

Trouble Shooting

If you get an error from the Excel Percentile function this is likely to be one of the following:

Common Errors

#NUM!	-	Occurs if the supplied value of k is less than 0 or greater than 1
#VALUE!	-	Occurs if the supplied value of k is non-numeric

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