Textbook Question
You Explain It! Percentiles According to the National Center for Health Statistics, a 19-year-old female whose height is 67.1 inches has a height that is at the 85th percentile. Explain what this means.
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3. Describing Data Numerically
Percentiles & Quartiles
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In a distribution of exam scores, what does it mean for a student to be at the 95th percentile?
A
The student’s score is 95% of the maximum possible score.
B
The student scored higher than or equal to 95% of the students in the distribution.
C
95% of the students scored exactly the same as this student.
D
The student scored higher than or equal to 5% of the students in the distribution.
Verified step by step guidance1
Understand that a percentile indicates the relative standing of a value within a data distribution. Specifically, the p-th percentile is the value below which p percent of the data falls.
Recognize that being at the 95th percentile means the student's score is greater than or equal to 95% of all the scores in the distribution.
Note that this does not mean the student scored 95% of the maximum possible score; percentiles relate to the position within the data, not the raw score percentage.
Also, it does not mean that 95% of students scored exactly the same as this student, but rather that 95% scored less than or equal to this student's score.
Finally, understand that the student scored higher than or equal to 95% of the students, not just 5%, which would correspond to the 5th percentile.
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