Banana AnalyticsBANANAANALYTICS
Metric glossary

Methodology concepts

National percentile rank

National percentile rank

What is it?

Where a county's score falls compared to every other U.S. county on the same measure. A score in the 80th percentile means the county is worse than 80% of U.S. counties on that measure (when the measure is one where higher = worse).

Why it matters

Raw values like '8.3 µg/m³' don't tell you whether your county is unusual without national context. Percentile ranks make comparisons defensible because they explicitly anchor against the full distribution.

Data source

Banana Analytics methodology · View source →