So, Fortnite is a super popular, first-person-shooter, massive multi-player online game. I only know this because my kid LOVES Fortnite. With the free version, called Battle Royale, a player parachutes onto an island, scour for supplies, and try to kill the other players. Like, there is way more to it than that, but this is my limited, 39-year-old mother of two explanation. And, admittedly, I don't game, so please don't rake me over the coals if I'm not using the proper Fortnite terminology to describe things!
Anyway, my brain thinks in statistics examples. So I noticed that for each Battle Royale match starts with 100 players. See the screen shot: This player is parachuting on to the island at the beginning of the skirmish, and there are still 100 players left since the game is just starting and no one has been eliminated.
Well, when we introduce our students to the normal curve and percentiles and z-scores and such, we tell them that the normal curve represents 100% of the distribution, yeah? Well, think of all the players that begin the skirmish as the total normal distribution for game performance.
And after a player is killed, they find out their rank. See below:
This is a screen shot of the typical information that comes up when a player is killed. Here, Archieonic placed #90. So, since there are 100 total players, 10 players were eliminated before him/her. SO: This player ranked in the 10th percentile. Get it?
Also, Fortnite provides information that allows you to talk about broader ideas of using percentile ranks, like falling into 10th percentile or the 25th percentile. See below:
