How to calculate a z-score
- Enter the value, the mean and the standard deviation.
- Read the z-score: how many standard deviations the value is above or below the mean.
- Read the percentile (the share of values below it), the area above and the p-value.
The 68-95-99.7 rule
In a normal distribution about 68% of values lie within 1 standard deviation of the mean, 95% within 2 and 99.7% within 3. So a z-score beyond ±3 is rare: about 3 values in 1,000.
Example
IQ scores are scaled to a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15. A score of 130 has z = (130 − 100) ÷ 15 = 2, which is about the 97.7th percentile: higher than roughly 97.7% of people.