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Frequency Distributions and Visualizing Data

Percentiles, Quartiles and Five Number Summaries

 Learning Objectives

Calculate and understand percentiles, quartiles and five number summaries

Percentiles:

  • The value such that a specified percent of the data is below that value
  • Example: If the 80% percentile (P80) = 179, then 80% of the data is below 179.
  • We will use = PERCENTILE.INC(arrayk) in Excel to determine these values

Quartiles:

  • The data can be ‘split’ into four quarters
  • Q1 is the value such that 25% of the data is below this value (=P25)
  • Q2 is the value such that 50% of the data is below this value (=P50)
  • Note: Q2 is also the median
  • Q3 is the value such that 75% of the data is below this value (=P75)
  • We will use = QUARTILE.INC(array, quart) in Excel to determine the quartiles

Five Number Summaries

Data can be ‘summarized’ by its five number summary. This summary is used to determine the shape of the data and generate boxplots.

  1. Minimum (min) – the minimum value in the data
  2. First quartile (Q1) – the first quartile value
  3. Median (Q2) – the second quartile value
  4. Third quartile (Q3) – the third quartile value
  5. Maximum – the maximum value in the data

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An Introduction to Business Statistics for Analytics (1st Edition) Copyright © 2024 by Amy Goldlist; Charles Chan; Leslie Major; Michael Johnson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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