I want to mimic the Excel equivalent PERCENTILE function in C#
(or in some pseudo code). How can I do that? The function should take two arguments where the first is a list of values and the second is for what percentile the function should calculate for.
Tanks!
Edit: I'm sorry if my question came across like I had not tried it my self. I just couldn't understand how the excel function worked (yes, I tried wikipedia and wolfram first) and I thought I would understand it better if someone presented it in code.
@CodeInChaos gave an answer that seem to be what I'm after.
I think Wikipedia page has formulas you need to write your own function...
I tried this:
public double Percentile(double[] sequence, double excelPercentile)
{
Array.Sort(sequence);
int N = sequence.Length;
double n = (N - 1) * excelPercentile + 1;
// Another method: double n = (N + 1) * excelPercentile;
if (n == 1d) return sequence[0];
else if (n == N) return sequence[N - 1];
else
{
int k = (int)n;
double d = n - k;
return sequence[k - 1] + d * (sequence[k] - sequence[k - 1]);
}
}
EDITED after CodeInChaos comment:
Excel uses a percentile value between 0 and 1 (so I changed my code to implement this with Wikipedia formulas) and the other method to calulate n (so I changed the commented one).
Trying to reproduce the results at: http://www.techonthenet.com/excel/formulas/percentile.php I came up with:
public static double Percentile(IEnumerable<double> seq,double percentile)
{
var elements=seq.ToArray();
Array.Sort(elements);
double realIndex=percentile*(elements.Length-1);
int index=(int)realIndex;
double frac=realIndex-index;
if(index+1<elements.Length)
return elements[index]*(1-frac)+elements[index+1]*frac;
else
return elements[index];
}
(Does not handle NaN
and infinities).
A few test cases:
Percentile(new double[]{1,2,3,4}, 0.8).Dump();// 3.4
Percentile(new double[]{7,8,9,20}, 0.35).Dump();// 8.05
Percentile(new double[]{1,2,3,4}, 0.3).Dump();// 1.9
Add the values to a list, sort that list, and take the index value ceil(length of the list * percentile).