Percentile Calculation

Percentile calculations transform numeric values into their relative standing within a dataset by expressing them as a percentile rank. Rather than showing raw sales amounts, the chart displays how each value compares to the rest of the dataset on a scale from 0 to 100.

Percentiles are useful when you want to understand how strongly a value performs relative to others, rather than simply identifying first place, second place, and so on. For example, a country in the 90th percentile performs better than 90 percent of the other countries in the dataset.

In this section, percentile calculations are demonstrated using a column chart titled Sales Performance Ranking by Country. This example illustrates how percentile calculations can be used to evaluate the relative performance of each country compared to the entire dataset.

Applying a percentile calculation fundamentally changes how the chart is interpreted. The value axis no longer represents the original numeric measure, such as sales amount. Instead, it represents percentile positions, showing how each value ranks relative to all other values. As a result, column heights reflect relative standing rather than raw totals.

Understanding Percentile Calculation Settings

When you select Percentile Calculation from the Quick Functions menu, a configuration panel appears with settings that determine how the percentile is calculated.

Calculation Type

The Calculation Type is set to Percentile. Another available calculation type, Ranking, is covered in the previous section.

Along

The Along setting determines the grouping context in which the percentile calculation is applied.

In a simple column chart, all values belong to a single implicit series. Setting Along to Legend (Series) applies the percentile calculation across the entire dataset, allowing all categories to be compared together.
Setting Along to Axis (Category) in a simple chart evaluates each category independently. Since each category contains only a single value, the percentile becomes meaningless and may result in uniform or distorted outputs.
In grouped charts, each category contains multiple series values. Setting Along to Axis (Category) applies the percentile calculation within each category group, allowing the values in that group to be compared independently.
Trellis Columns and Trellis Rows apply percentile calculations independently within each trellis panel when the chart is split into multiple small charts.

Percentile Calculations on a Column Chart

In this example, percentile is applied across the entire dataset to show how each country performs relative to all others.

Create a column chart and bind Sales Amount to the Values data binding slot and Country to the Axis (Category).
Open the Quick Functions menu for Sales Amount (gear icon) and select Percentile Calculation. Use the default settings:
- Calculation Type: Percentile
- Along: Legend (Series)
Apply sorting to improve readability. With the chart selected, open the sort options and sort by Sum of Sales Amount in ascending order.
In the Inspector panel, expand the Title section and set the title to Sales Performance Ranking by Country.

In this configuration, percentile is applied globally across all countries. Each column represents the percentile position of a country relative to all other countries in the dataset. Countries with taller columns are positioned higher in the overall distribution, while shorter columns represent lower percentile positions.