Splunk Core Certified Advanced Power User Practice Test

Percentile functions in Splunk, such as `perc` and `pct`, are designed to operate on numeric values. These functions calculate the percentile ranges within a set of numerical data, allowing users to understand the distribution of the data points. For instance, you might want to find the 90th percentile of response times from a web server log to determine the threshold performance you want to ensure is met.

Numeric values are essential for these calculations because percentiles inherently involve ranking values in numerical order and determining thresholds based on their distribution. Other types of values, such as strings, date and time, or booleans, do not lend themselves to the same mathematical operations that are required for percentile calculations. Each of these alternatives represents concepts that cannot be appropriately quantified or ranked in the same manner as numeric data. Therefore, the primary function of percentile calculations is to provide insights into numeric datasets, validating the importance of numeric values in this context.