What Are Percentiles?

In statistics, percentiles are used to understand and interpret data. The nth percentile of a set of data is the value at which n percent of the data is below it. In everyday life, percentiles are used to understand values such as test scores, health indicators, and other measurements.
— ThoughtCo.
Definition of a Percentile in Statistics and How to Calculate It

With that in mind, have a look at the following percentiles animation.

What are Percentiles?

It starts off showing a list of 100, randomly sorted, response times. Then, the response times are sorted by the quickest response time at the top left to slowest at the bottom right. After that, a rank out of 100 appears for each one.

And finally, the 95th number ranks becomes highlighted in red, while the others remain listed in grey. This final colouration step, hopefully, makes it easier to see that the final five numbers make up the 95th percentile for this data set.

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