Inverse to _pctile ?

[Dany Bahar]

For the purpose of creating a table, I want to include the percentile of a given value within the distribution of a variable. In other words, if I have a variable named dens I'd like to know what percentile corresponds to value 0.229. I do not need to create a new variable with this value, but only to get the number in memory.

I've seen that _pctile does the opposite:

_pctile dens, p(15)

This will result in:

. return list

scalars:
r(r1) = .0229039993137121

Implying that the value 0.0229 corresponds to the 15th percentile in the distribution of dens.

Yet, I'm looking for a command in which I can input the value 0.0229 and STATA will return the percentile 15, in this example.

Thanks.

[daniel klein]

Do you want something like

sysuse auto
_pctile price , p(15)
return list

count if price < r(r1)
display r(N)/c(N)

Best
Daniel

[Dany Bahar]

Exactly right. Thank you very much!