numbersstatisticstechnical
It is necessary for me to write about the 2.5th and 97.5th percentiles of a data set. What is the correct way of writing this?
This post talks about "zeroth", "n-th" and even "epsilonth" as generalisations of the -th suffix, but I haven't found any guidelines for non-integers.
I feel that 2.5th percentile sounds better than 2.5-percentile. Do you agree?
"One hundred and thirty-five" is perfectly correct, although the "and" tends to be removed in American English. It makes sense mathematically, since "and" is synonymous with "plus" — two apples and three apples makes five apples. One hundred, and thirty-five, makes 135.
The "and" is particularly useful when articulating a series of numbers. "One hundred one, one hundred two" could easily be misheard as "one hundred, one, one hundred, two" whereas using "one hundred and one, one hundred and two" removes that ambiguity.
Ultimately though it depends on location and culture. In the UK the "and" is always used; in the US there are a mixture of usages.
Looking at this ngram, it seems that skipping the "and" has only gained popularity over the last hundred years or so but using the "and" is still far more prevalent:
The terms muxing and demuxing are in the technical lexicon, so it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to imagine what interface muxing and interface demuxing might entail.
If you have no philosophical objections to the terms, your grid would look like this:
If you're looking for terms that are both unique (as applied to software interfaces) and easier on the ear, consider coalesce and deliquesce:
Best Answer
There are only one hundred percentiles. You can not be in the 2.5th percentile.