Select TOP X (or bottom) percent for numeric values in MySQL

Question

I was wondering if there are any functions that can be used in MySQL to select the TOP X(or bottom) percent from a column containing numeric values.

Basically, I have a column containing a list of prices and I only want to return those fields in the top ten percentile of prices. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

just as an FYI (i know this question is a few years old), this can be done other, cleaner ways as well.

SELECT * FROM product_table WHERE price >= (SELECT price FROM product_table 
ORDER BY price DESC LIMIT 1 OFFSET (SELECT 0.1 * COUNT(*) FROM product_table));

i ran a similar query over a very large database, and it ran very quickly.