10th percentile: what it means and how to read it

How to read it

The value below which the lowest tenth of the answers lie.

In plain words

A hospital wrote down how long 200 patients waited. The manager wanted to know what a quick visit looks like, but every patient waited a different time. She asked for p10, the 10th percentile, and got 5 minutes. So one patient in ten waited less than 5 minutes. Now she can say that a wait of 4 minutes is among the quickest tenth, and a wait of 12 minutes is not. The add-on counts it the way the program SPSS does, so the answer can differ a little from the PERCENTILE function in Google Sheets.

How it is computed

The value at the position (n + 1) · 10 / 100 of the sorted values, interpolated between neighbours (SPSS EXAMINE, HAVERAGE); before the first value — the minimum, past the last — the maximum.

Where you see it

• STATS_DESCRIPTIVE — Column-wise descriptive statistics with flexible metric selection and optional column filtering.

Related values

• 90th percentile — The 90th percentile: 90% of the values are below it; computed as in SPSS, so it can differ from the Sheets QUARTILE and PERCENTILE functions.
• Interquartile range — q3 − q1.
• Percentile — The q-th percentile, q from 0 to 100, fractions allowed (percentile.12.5); computed as in SPSS, like the quartiles. percentile.0.95 is the 0.95th percentile, not the 95th. Without q or with q outside 0…100 the cell is empty and the error is listed under the table.
• Median absolute deviation — The median of the absolute deviations from the median, without the 1.4826 factor.
• Geometric mean — The n-th root of the product of the values; zero and tiny values are raised to epsilon (Settings), a negative value gives an empty cell.

Get it in your sheet

One formula in a cell gives the whole report, 10th percentile included. ALS Stats is a free add-on for Google Sheets™.

Install ALS Stats from Google Workspace Marketplace (opens in a new tab)