Angela took a general aptitude test and scored in the 89th percentile for aptitude in accounting.
(a) What percentage of the scores were at or below her score?
(b) What percentage were above?

Question

Angela took a general aptitude test and scored in the 89th percentile for aptitude in accounting.
(a) What percentage of the scores were at or below her score?
(b) What percentage were above?

tkhunny · Answer

What does "percentile" mean in this context?

Hint: 100th percentile is theoretically impossible.

anonymous · Answer

The highest percentile possible for this equation is 99. It's a "box and whisker" problem.

anonymous · Answer

The percentile is a ranking.

tkhunny · Answer

Okay, so an 89th percentile means what?  What percent of the tested population beat Miss Angela on the exam?

Note: Sometimes, some fortuitous rounding creates a 100th percentile designation.

anonymous · Answer

It means that she ranked 89 out of the population on the exam

tkhunny · Answer

Not quite.  If there were exactly 100 tested participants, that would be close, but backwards.  We are not given the number of participants.

The highest score of your 100 participants is the 99th percentile.  This individual scored higher than 99% of the tested population.  This individual was outscored by 0% of the population.

Angela is in the 89th percentile.  She scored higher than 89% of the population.  She would rank 11th in your 100 exam students.