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I am looking for a word that describes a set of numeric values divided into three equal, ordered parts.

For example, "quartile" refers to subsets of a set that has been divided into four equally-size parts sorted in order (i.e., the first quartile is the set of the first 25% of lowest values, the second contains the next-higher subset of 25% of the values, etc.). Likewise, "quintile" refers to subsets of a set divided into five equally-size ordered parts.

"Thirds" is not exactly what I am looking for since dividing something into thirds does not necessarily connote an ordering of items in the set.

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2 Answers 2

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It is a tertile.

Wiktionary:

tertile Noun

(statistics) Either of the two points that divide an ordered distribution into three parts, each containing a third of the population.
(statistics) Any one of the three groups so divided.
The first tertile results include January through April's revenues.

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    I like tertiles.
    – JeffUK
    Commented Jun 22, 2021 at 19:33
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Also tercile

(statistics) Either of the two points that divide an ordered distribution into three parts, each containing a third of the population.
(statistics) Any one of the three groups so divided.
wiktionary

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