The 50th percentile is equivalent to which statistic?

• A. Mean
• B. Median
• C. Mode
• D. Variance

Answer: (B)

Percentiles mark the value below which a certain percentage of data fall. The 50th percentile is the value below which half of the observations lie, which by definition is the median. The median is the middle value of a dataset—when there’s an odd number of observations it’s the central value, and when there’s an even number it’s the average of the two central values. The mean is the arithmetic average and can be influenced by extreme values, the mode is the most frequent value, and variance measures how spread out the data are. So the 50th percentile corresponds to the median.