Jaotuspunkid

Jaotuspunkid is an Estonian term used in statistics to refer to distribution or division points within a data set. In English, the concept is typically called quantiles. Jaotuspunkid mark thresholds that partition a distribution into intervals containing specified proportions of observations, providing a compact summary of its location and spread.

The word combines jaotus, meaning distribution or division, with punkt, meaning point; the plural form jaotuspunkid is used for multiple such thresholds. In formal terms, for a random variable with distribution function F, a p-quantile q_p satisfies F(q_p) = p (more precisely q_p = inf{x : F(x) ≥ p}). Sample quantiles estimate these values from data, often using order statistics.

Common types of jaotuspunkid include quartiles (p = 0.25, 0.5, 0.75), deciles (p = 0.1, 0.2, …, 0.9), and percentiles (p ranging from 0 to 1 in increments of 0.01). They are widely used in data analysis and visualization, such as in box plots, where the quartile jaotuspunkid define the box boundaries and the whiskers illustrate dispersion.

Jaotuspunkid provide a robust, model-free description of a distribution’s central tendency and spread, and they facilitate comparison between data sets, detection of skewness, and identification of outliers. See also quantile, percentile, quartile, and related concepts in descriptive statistics.