$percentile - Amazon DocumentDB
BehaviorExample (MongoDB Shell)Expression usage example (MongoDB Shell)Code examples
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$percentile

New from version 8.0.1.

The $percentile operator in Amazon DocumentDB calculates specified percentile values for numeric data. As an accumulator, it computes percentile values across documents within a group in the $group stage of an aggregation pipeline. As an expression, it calculates percentiles for an array of numbers.

Parameters

  • input: An expression that resolves to a numeric value or an array of numeric values.

  • p: An array of percentile values between 0 and 1, where each value represents a percentile to calculate. For example, [0.25, 0.5, 0.75] calculates the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentiles.

  • method: A string specifying the calculation method. Currently only "approximate" is supported.

Behavior

The "approximate" method uses the t-digest algorithm to calculate approximate, percentile-based metrics. With small datasets, distinct percentile values may resolve to the same result. For example, with only 5 values per group, p90 and p99 may both return the maximum value in the group. Precision improves as the number of data points increases.

Example (MongoDB Shell)

The following example demonstrates the use of the $percentile operator to calculate the 25th and 75th percentile of scores per class.

Create sample documents

db.students.insertMany([
  { class: "A", score: 72 },
  { class: "A", score: 85 },
  { class: "A", score: 90 },
  { class: "A", score: 68 },
  { class: "A", score: 95 },
  { class: "B", score: 80 },
  { class: "B", score: 75 },
  { class: "B", score: 92 },
  { class: "B", score: 88 },
  { class: "B", score: 70 }
]);

Query example

db.students.aggregate([
  { $group: {
      _id: "$class",
      percentiles: { $percentile: { input: "$score", p: [0.25, 0.75], method: "approximate" } }
    }}
]);

Output

[
  { "_id": "A", "percentiles": [72, 90] },
  { "_id": "B", "percentiles": [75, 88] }
]

Expression usage example (MongoDB Shell)

The $percentile operator can also be used as an expression within a $project stage to compute percentiles of an array field.

Create sample documents

db.surveys.insertMany([
  { _id: 1, responses: [2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20] },
  { _id: 2, responses: [1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19] }
]);

Query example

db.surveys.aggregate([
  { $project: {
      quartiles: { $percentile: { input: "$responses", p: [0.25, 0.5, 0.75], method: "approximate" } }
    }}
]);

Output

[
  { "_id": 1, "quartiles": [6, 10, 16] },
  { "_id": 2, "quartiles": [5, 9, 15] }
]

Code examples

To view a code example for using the $percentile operator, choose the tab for the language that you want to use. The following examples show both accumulator usage (in $group) and expression usage (in $project):

Node.js
const { MongoClient } = require('mongodb');

async function example() {
  const uri = 'mongodb://<username>:<password>@<cluster-endpoint>:27017/?tls=true&tlsCAFile=global-bundle.pem&replicaSet=rs0&readPreference=secondaryPreferred&retryWrites=false';
  const client = new MongoClient(uri);

  try {
    await client.connect();
    const db = client.db('test');

    // Accumulator usage: percentiles across grouped documents
    const students = db.collection('students');
    const accumulatorResult = await students.aggregate([
      { $group: {
          _id: "$class",
          percentiles: { $percentile: { input: "$score", p: [0.25, 0.75], method: "approximate" } }
        }}
    ]).toArray();
    console.log('Accumulator result:', accumulatorResult);

    // Expression usage: percentiles of an array field
    const surveys = db.collection('surveys');
    const expressionResult = await surveys.aggregate([
      { $project: {
          quartiles: { $percentile: { input: "$responses", p: [0.25, 0.5, 0.75], method: "approximate" } }
        }}
    ]).toArray();
    console.log('Expression result:', expressionResult);

  } finally {
    await client.close();
  }
}

example();
Python
from pymongo import MongoClient

def example():
    client = MongoClient('mongodb://<username>:<password>@<cluster-endpoint>:27017/?tls=true&tlsCAFile=global-bundle.pem&replicaSet=rs0&readPreference=secondaryPreferred&retryWrites=false')

    try:
        db = client['test']

        # Accumulator usage: percentiles across grouped documents
        students = db['students']
        accumulator_result = list(students.aggregate([
            { '$group': {
                '_id': '$class',
                'percentiles': { '$percentile': { 'input': '$score', 'p': [0.25, 0.75], 'method': 'approximate' } }
            }}
        ]))
        print('Accumulator result:', accumulator_result)

        # Expression usage: percentiles of an array field
        surveys = db['surveys']
        expression_result = list(surveys.aggregate([
            { '$project': {
                'quartiles': { '$percentile': { 'input': '$responses', 'p': [0.25, 0.5, 0.75], 'method': 'approximate' } }
            }}
        ]))
        print('Expression result:', expression_result)

    finally:
        client.close()

example()