kth

KTH, short for Kungliga Tekniska högskolan, is a public research university located in Stockholm, Sweden. It is one of Europe’s leading technical universities, with a focus on engineering, architecture, and technology. KTH offers undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral programs across multiple faculties and schools, and it supports a wide range of research areas such as energy, materials science, information technology, transportation, and urban development. The university collaborates with industry, government, and international partners and participates in numerous exchange programs and joint research initiatives. It is funded by the Swedish government and governed by a board, with a president as its chief executive.

In mathematics and statistics, kth denotes the k-th element in an ordered sequence. The kth order statistic X_(k) is the k-th smallest value in a sample of size n when the data are sorted in nondecreasing order. The concept is central to nonparametric methods, reliability analysis, and various estimation and hypothesis-testing techniques. The distribution of X_(k) depends on the underlying population distribution and sample size, and its properties are used in rank-based methods and goodness-of-fit assessments.

Other uses of the term include its general role as an ordinal indicator for position in a sequence, as in “the kth item.” The uppercase acronym KTH is commonly reserved for the Swedish institution, while the lowercase “kth” typically appears in mathematical, statistical, and programming contexts to denote a position or rank. The term is therefore polysemous, with context guiding whether it refers to the university or to a rank in an ordered set.