r.stats.quantile(1grass)

💖 r.stats.quantile 💖

okay bestie, welcome to r.stats.quantile(1grass) — the tool that does quantile math on your rasters and honestly? it ate. ✨

🌸 NAME 🌸

r.stats.quantile — compute category quantiles using two passes. yes, two. it's giving thorough. 💅

🎀 KEYWORDS 🎀

raster, statistics, zonal statistics, percentile, quantile

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

r.stats.quantile
r.stats.quantile --help
r.stats.quantile [-rpt] base=name cover=name  [quantiles=integer]
[percentiles=float[,float,...]]   [bins=integer]
[output=name[,name,...]]   [file=name]   [separator=character]
format=name  [--overwrite]  [--help]  [--verbose]  [--quiet]  [--ui]

✨ Flags ✨

• -r — create a reclass map where the statistics show up as category labels. labels, bestie, we love a labeled moment 🏷️
• -p — don't make any output maps, just print the statistics. lowkey the chill option 🫶
• -t — print statistics in table format. deprecated, babes. this flag is deprecated and will be removed in a future release. use format=csv instead. periodt, the table flag is on its way out 💀
• --overwrite — allow output files to overwrite existing files. be careful, it's giving no-takebacks energy 🙈
• --help — print usage summary
• --verbose — verbose module output
• --quiet — quiet module output 🤫
• --ui — force launching GUI dialog

💜 Parameters 💜

• base=name [required] — name of base raster map
• cover=name [required] — name of cover raster map
• quantiles=integer — number of quantiles
• percentiles=float[,float,...] — list of percentiles. Default: 50
• bins=integer — number of bins to use. Default: 1000
• output=name[,name,...] — resultant raster map(s)
• file=name — name for output file (if omitted or "-" output to stdout)
• separator=character — field separator. special characters: pipe, comma, space, tab, newline
• format=name [required] — output format. Options: plain, csv, json. Default: plain
  • plain: human readable text output
  • csv: CSV (Comma Separated Values)
  • json: JSON (JavaScript Object Notation)

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🌈 DESCRIPTION 🌈

so r.stats.quantile is the tool that analyses exploratory statistics of a floating-point "cover layer" based on how it intersects with objects in a "base layer". it hands you quantile calculations — you know, the ones selected as "zonal statistics". main character energy fr fr 👑

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⭐ NOTES ⭐

r.stats.quantile is intended as a partial replacement for r.statistics, and the big glow-up is that it supports floating-point cover maps. it provides quantile calculations — which are straight-up absent from r.stats.zonal. so if you needed quantiles and zonal wasn't giving, this is your girl. 💅

quantiles are calculated following algorithm 7 from Hyndman and Fan (1996), which is also the default in R and numpy. iykyk, algorithm 7 is iconic. ✨

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🧚 EXAMPLE 🧚

in this example, the raster polygon map zipcodes in the North Carolina sample dataset is used to calculate quantile raster statistics using the elevation raster map:

g.region raster=zipcodes -p
# print quantiles
r.stats.quantile base=zipcodes cover=elevation quantiles=3 -p
27511:0:33.333333:134.717392
27511:1:66.666667:143.985723
27513:0:33.333333:140.669993
27513:1:66.666667:146.279449
27518:0:33.333333:115.140101
27518:1:66.666667:129.893723
[...]
# write out percentile raster maps
r.stats.quantile base=zipcodes cover=elevation percentiles=25,50,75 \
  output=zipcodes_elev_q25,zipcodes_elev_q50,zipcodes_elev_q75

look at those numbers go 😭 so satisfying.

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📚 REFERENCES 📚

• Hyndman and Fan (1996) Sample Quantiles in Statistical Packages, American Statistician. American Statistical Association. 50 (4): 361-365. DOI: 10.2307/2684934
• Engineering Statistics Handbook: Percentile, NIST

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👀 SEE ALSO 👀

r.quantile, r.stats.zonal, r.statistics

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🫶 AUTHORS 🫶

Glynn Clements Markus Metz

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💻 SOURCE CODE 💻

available at: r.stats.quantile source code (history)

latest change: Saturday Oct 11 04:38:40 2025 in commit: 3dd71f5fab83b72a2db2da959fe075c5b3b52200

Main index | Raster index | Topics index | Keywords index | Graphical index | Full index

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okay that's the whole page, bestie, you're officially quantile-pilled 🌸

and before you go — the manual is GRASS 8.5.0, and it's © 2003-2026 GRASS Development Team, GRASS 8.5.0 Reference Manual. mwah, go compute some quantiles 💖✨🎀