Thanks, everyone. A friend has suggested to use "double-octiles" for
quantiles based on division into 16 groups of equal frequency. How do you
think about this? "Sedeciles", as suggested by Nick Cox, is a possible name
too.
Wenjun Li
Biostatistics Research Center
Tufts-New England Medical Center
750 Washington Street, #63
Boston, MA 02111
Tel (617) 636 1603 Fax (617) 636 5560
Email: wli1@lifespan.org <mailto:wli1@lifespan.org>
-----Original Message-----
From: Nick Cox [mailto:n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk]
Sent: Wednesday, October 30, 2002 4:31 PM
To: statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu
Subject: st: RE: A simple but really hard question
Li, Wenjun
>
> I am trying to find the name of quintiles. When the
> population was divided
> into four groups according to its distribution, we call
> them quartiles; when
> divided into equally eight groups, we call them octiles;
> when divided into
> 16 groups, what is the name for these quantiles?
>
"quantiles" is the general name.
"quintiles" would be associated with a division
into 5 groups.
All the words I have heard of for other particular
cases use Latin roots. So what would it be?
The Latin for 16 was "sedecim", so I suppose
it would be "sedeciles".
However, it wouldn't surprise me -- should you adopt this
term -- if you were the first person ever to use it, and
whenever you used it, you would have to explain it
to almost everyone. So, I would stick with quantiles
based on division into 16 groups of equal frequency,
wordier but serviceable.
Nick
n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk
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