A percentile (or a centile) is a measure used in statistics indicating the value below which a given percentage of observations in a group of observations fall.
For example, the 20th percentile is the value (or score) below which 20 percent of the observations may be found.
The term percentile and the related term percentile rank are often used in the reporting of scores from norm-referenced tests.
For example, if a score is in the 86th percentile, it is higher than 86% of the other scores.
100th percentile being the maximum, it therefore divides the items into 100 equal parts.