QUARTILE function in Excel is a statistical function used to calculate a data set’s quartile or 25th percentile. The quartile is a measure of the spread of a dataset and is the value where 25% of the data is below and 75% is above. The function is useful in analyzing the distribution of data and comparing datasets.
The QUARTILE formula has three arguments:
- array, which is the range of cells containing the data to be analyzed;
- quart, which is the quartile to be calculated;
- exclusive, which is an optional argument that specifies whether to calculate the quartile using the exclusive method or the inclusive method.
The exclusive method returns the exact 25th percentile, while the inclusive method returns the midpoint between the 25th and 26th percentile. When using the QUARTILE formula, the array argument must be a range of cells, not a single cell. The quart argument can be any value from 0 to 4; 0 returns the minimum value of the dataset, 1 returns the lower quartile, 2 returns the median, 3 returns the upper quartile, and 4 returns the maximum value of the dataset.
You can use the function to compare datasets, analyze the distribution of data, and set thresholds. For example, the function can be used to set grade thresholds for students, determine the quartiles of a population, or compare two datasets.
