Talk:Documentation/Calc Functions/PERCENTILE

    From The Document Foundation Wiki

    SF comments

    (1) Summary. I think that this paragraph is insufficient – many readers might not understand the concept of an alpha-percentile. Suggest adding something like the following – “Percentiles can be used to understand the significance of particular values within a data set. The nth percentile of a data set is the value below which n% of the data set lies. This function uses an alpha argument lying in the range 0 to 1 (inclusive), which corresponds to a percentage in the range 0% to 100%. For example, an alpha of 0.5 gives the 50th percentile, also known as the median.”.
    (2) Returns. In the light of the proposed improvement to the Summary section, suggest simplifying this statement to read – “Returns a real number which is the scale value for the specified data set and alpha.”.
    (3) Arguments, 2nd bullet. No mention of what "n" is. Would it be worth adding an example of this in action? Perhaps assume a data set with five values, then alpha values of 0, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75, and 1 will pick out the values in the data set in ascending order?
    (4) Additional details, 1st paragraph. Maybe re-word slightly as – “alpha = 0.25 gives the first quartile, alpha = 0.5 gives the median, and alpha = 0.75 gives the third quartile.”.
    (5) Additional details, procedure. I am not sure that this is necessary, and do we know for sure that it reflects exactly what our software does? Suggest deletion.
    (6) Additional details, last bullet. Suggest changing “PERCENTILE” to “percentiles”.
    (7) Examples, 2nd example. Insert “the” before “range”.
    (8) Examples, general. Suggest including an example for which no interpolation is carried out. Maybe combine this with specifying the data set as an array in {} brackets?

    --Stevefanning (talk) 2020-10-31T11:59:37 (UTC)


    Ronnie

    all points addressed.

    --Ronnie rg8888 (talk) 2020-11-27T17:37:55 (UTC)