Percentage and Percentile

Percentages are really easy to understand than percentiles because they are used to calculate the range of figures in day-to-day life. A percentage is a fraction of a whole that is represented as a number between 0 and 100 instead of a fraction. In percentages all of something is said to be a hundred percent, half of something is said to be 50 percent and none of something is said to be zero percent. To calculate the percentage, we need to divide the given number by the total and multiply it by 100. After doing this, we will be receiving the percentage of some data.

Many people will be aware of what a percentage is. But, many people will be unaware of the term percentile. Percentages are used in most of the places like calculating college grades in college, interest rates in banks, etc. people usually don’t use percentiles. Percentiles are usually used in statistics where the group of data is grouped according to the percentage values. Percentile is nothing but the percentage of values that fall under the specific value. To understand the context better let’s discuss their differences in detail:

Difference between percentage and percentile

Definition

Percentage said as a can be regarded as a ratio which is expressed as a fraction of 100. Usually, a percentage will be out of 100 and is calculated by dividing the number by the total and multiplying it with 100.

Percentile is not any number out of 100. It’s a process to group the statistical data according to their percentage values. The percentile refers to how well you did in comparison to other individuals on the test, but the percentage represents your particular result. Percentile is a term used in statistics and for scoring standardized exams.

Position

Percentile is the one under which the group of percentages can be found according to their percentage values. The percentage can be calculated without the help of the percentile. Whereas, percentile cannot be found out without the help of percentage.

Symbol

Everything will be having different symbols. Here symbol of percentage is “%”. On the other hand, the percentile is indicated with Xth.

Quartiles

Usually, percentages do not have any quartiles. Whereas, the percentiles have quartiles.

Rank

Here The percentile refers to how well you did in comparison to other individuals on the test, but the percentage represents your particular result. From this we can clearly say that percentiles are fully dependent on the ranks whereas, the percentage does not need any ranks to calculate them.

Decimals

Percentages can be shown as or written in decimals whereas, the percentile cannot be written in decimal values. Without percentile, calculation of percentage is possible. but, without percentage calculation of percentile is not possible.

Ratio

Percentages can be written in the form of ratios as it’s in the form of fractions and it will be easy to show them in ratio form. Whereas, percentiles cannot be shown in the ratio form.

Based on

A percent is based on a single example which means it’s the calculation of single data, but a percentile is based on comparing one case to all of the cases in a certain context.

Distribution

Percentages do not rely on something for its calculation like a normal distribution. On the other hand, to calculate percentile it’s necessary to have a normal distribution. Without normal distribution, it’s difficult to calculate percentile.

Conclusion

From the above article, it’s clear that percentages are a section that comes under percentile. Percentiles usually separate the huge data into segments. It differentiates the statistical data into segments according to the percentages. We can even say that percentile is a percentage-based segment.

A clear example is that a percentage will tell us how we performed in the exam and the percentile will tell how we performed among the class or group.

Because the base value is always 100, the percentage is mostly used for reporting information and for comparison. On the other hand, we utilise percentile to determine a value’s relative position, and it is mostly used in the ranking system.