4.

14 Measure of Relative Position

The median divides the distribution into two equal parts. Going further, there are values
which divide the distribution into equal parts. A measure of position (or measure of location
or fractile) is a value which a specified fraction or percentage of the observations in a given set
must fall. It describes the standing or location of an observation relative to the rest of the data.
The common measures of position are quartiles, deciles, percentiles and standard scores or z-
score.

Quartiles
This measure divides the observation in four equal parts. The is the middle point
between the smallest value and the center value also called . The is also called the median,
is the middle value between the median and the highest value of the data set.

Formula:
( )

( )

Example:
1. Given: * +
Find:

Solution:
( ) ( ) ( )

( ) ( ) ( )

2. The owner of a coffee shop recorded the number of customers who came into his café
each hour in a day. The results were 14, 10, 12, 9, 17, 5, 8, 9, 14, 10, and 11. Find the
lower quartile and upper quartile of the data.

Solution:
 In ascending order the data are 5, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10, 11, 12, 14, 14, 17
 The least value in the data is 5 and the greatest value in the data is 17.
 The middle value in the data is 10.

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  The lower quartile is the value that is between the middle value and the least value in
the data set.
 So, the lower quartile is 9.
 The upper quartile is the value that is between the middle value and the greatest
value in the data set.
 So, the upper quartile is 14.

Deciles
The deciles are the nine score points which divided a distribution into ten equal parts.
They are deciles and are denoted as . They are computed in the same way that
the quartiles are calculated.

Formula:

( )

Example:
1. Find the 3rd decile or of the following test scores of a random sample of ten students:
35, 42, 40, 28, 15, 23, 33, 20, 18, and 28.
Solution:
First, arrange the score in ascending order.
15 18 20 23 28 28 33 35 40 42
Steps to find the decile value on a data with elements.

( ) ( )

is the 3rd element.

Therefore, .

2. Mrs. Labonete gave a test to her students in Statistics. The students finished their test in
35 minutes. This time is the 2.5th decile of the allotted time. What does this mean?

Explanation:
This means that 25% of the learners finished the test. A low quartile considered poor,
because it means the students finished the test in a short period of time.

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 3. Anthony is a secretary in one big company in Metro Manila. His salary is in the 7 th decile.
Should Anthony be glad about his salary or not? Explain your answer.
Solution:
70% of the employees receive a salary that is less than or equal to his salary and 30% of
the employees receive a salary that is greater than his salary. Anthony should be pleased with
his salary.

Percentile
This divides the observation into 100 equal parts. It is used to indicate how much of the
observation may be found below. For instance, if 30th percentile is the value, this means that
30% of the observation may fall below it.

To find the k-th percentile:

1. Arrange the observation from lowest to highest.
2. Compute the position.

( )

3. If is whole number, k-th is midway between and the next value.

4. If is not a whole number, round it up to the next integer and the value at
that position is the k-th percentile.

Example:
1. Find the 30th percentile or of the following test scores of a random sample of ten
students: 35, 42, 40, 28 15, 23, 33, 20, 33, 20, 18, and 28.
Solution:
Arrange the scores from the lowest to the highest.
15 18 20 23 28 28 33 35 40 42

To find its position us the formula ( ) and round off to the nearest integer.

Position of ( )

( )

( )

is the 3rd element.

Therefore, .

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Z-Score
This indicates how many standard deviations an element is from the mean. The positive
and negative signs indicates he direction of the point away from the mean. For instance, when z-
score is -1, this represents that its one standard deviation less than the mean, A-score of 3
represents that its 3 standard deviation above the mean. Z-score also allows us to calculate the
probability of a score occurring within our normal distribution also it can help in comparing
scores that are from different normal distribution.

̅
Computed using the formula:

Example:
1. Given a mean of 60 and a standard deviation of 5, find the corresponding z-score of
65.

Solution:
̅

This means that 65 is one standard deviation higher than the mean,

2. The report card of Cris shows that his grade in Math is 98 and Science is 90. The
mean grade in Math is 90 and a standard deviation is 10. In Science, the mean grade
is 80 and a standard deviation is 5. In which subject does Cris performs better?

Solution:
For Math For Science

̅ ̅

The values show that Math is 0.8 higher than the mean while Science is 2 standard deviation
higher than the mean, thus Cris performs better in Science.

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 Republic of the Philippines
SOUTHERN LEYTE STATE UNIVERSITY – TOMAS OPPUS
San Isidro, Tomas Oppus, Southern Leyte

ACTIVITY IN MEASURES POSITION

Name: ___________________________________________________ Date: _______________________
Course & Section: _________________________ Score: _________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
General Instructions:
a. Write all your answers in a clean sheet of bond paper.
b. Show all your solution and box your final answer.
c. Take a picture of your answer and send it through messenger.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Directions: Solve what is asked in the problem.

1. Aqua Running has been promoted as a method for cardiovascular conditioning for the
injured athlete as well as for others who desire a low impact aerobic workout. A study
reported in the Journal of Sports and Medicine investigated the relationship between
exercise cadence and heart rate by measuring the heart rates of 20 healthy volunteers at
a Candace of 48 cycles per minute (a cycle consisted of two steps.)
The data are listed here:
87 109 79 80 96 95 90 92 96 98
101 91 78 112 94 98 107 81 96 94
Find the lower and upper quartile.

2. Mrs. Marasigan is a veterinarian. One morning, she asked her secretary to record the
service time for 15 customers.
The following are service times in minutes.
20, 35, 55, 28, 46, 32, 25, 56, 55, 28, 37, 60, 47, 52, 17
Find the value of the 2nd decile, 6th decile, and 8th decile.

3. The weights of the students in a class are the following: 69, 70, 75, 66, 83, 88, 66, 63, 61,
68, 73, 57, 52, 58, and 77.
Compute the 15th percentile.

4. Mr. Mel Santiago is the sales manager of JERRY’S Bookstore He has sales staff
members who visit college professors all over the Philippines. Each Saturday morning,
he requires his sales staff to send him a report. His report includes, among other things,

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 the number of professors visited during the previous week. Listed below, ordered from
smallest to largest, are the number of professors visited last week.
38 40 41 45 48 48 50 50 51 51 52
52 53 54 55 55 55 56 56 57 59 59
59 62 62 62 63 64 65 66 66 67 67
69 69 71 77 78 79 79
Determine the following:
a. 3rd quartile
b. 9th decile
c. 33rd percentile

5. In a given distribution, the mean is 60 and the standard deviation is 8. Find the
corresponding standard scores of the following:
a. 78
b. 92
c. 44
d. 30

6. Given a mean of 55 and a standard deviation of 7.5, find the corresponding z-score of 71.

7. The report card of Selvyn shows that his grade in Math is 89 and Science is 93. The mean
grade in Math is 85 and a standard deviation is 5. In Science, the mean grade is 80 and a
standard deviation is 8. In which subject does Selvyn performs better?

8. The average grade of 1st year students taking Math in the Modern World is normally
distributed with a mean of 80 and a standard deviation of 6. If students are warned
when their grades fall below 75, what part of the 1st year students were given warning?

9. If scores are normally distributed with a mean of 25 and a standard deviation of 7, find
the z-score of the following:
a. 35
b. 37
c. 28

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