Flashcards on Percentage Change and Percentiles in Biology
Percentage Change & Percentiles in Biology Explained
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Percentiles and Descriptive Statistics
6 cards
Card 1
Question: What is the process to find a percentile in a data set?
Answer: Rank the data from smallest to largest, then divide it into 100 equal chunks; each chunk corresponds to one percentile.
Card 2
Question: What does each percentile represent in terms of the data?
Answer: Each percentile represents one percent of the data; the percentile's value shows the percentage of data with values lower than that percentile's data
Card 3
Question: If someone is in the 90th percentile for height, what does that mean?
Answer: It means 90% of the group are shorter than that person.
Card 4
Question: Which percentile corresponds to the median?
Answer: The median is the 50th percentile.
Card 5
Question: How can percentiles be used to give a more realistic idea of spread than the range?
Answer: By finding the range between the 10th and 90th percentiles (the middle 80%), you measure spread while ignoring extreme outliers.
Card 6
Question: Why might a data set with a smaller overall range still be less 'compact' around the median than another?
Answer: Because a large maximum value can be an outlier that expands the range, whereas the bulk of data may be concentrated closer to the median in the other