Finding distance within which set percentage of features fall using ArcGIS Desktop?

Question

https://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/7455/how-many-features-within-a-set-distance-arcview/ asked about finding the number of features within a certain distance of another feature in ArcView.

I have the opposite question: is there any way, in ArcGIS 10, to find the distance within which a set percentage of other features fall?

I guess I could create a distance raster and then extract the values to points (the other features) and consult the attribute table. However, I will later need to export the distance to another tool somehow, so the distance would need to be part of the tool's output.

Is there any way to find such a distance? In other words, is there a tool that works like the density tools in reverse?

Answer 1

I am unaware of a tool that directly solves your question. However you can use can use the Point Distance tool to find the distance your set of points falls from a feature.

For example, if you want to know at what distance 75% of the points are from your feature out of 100 points total. You would sort your points in ascending order by the distance field in your table and select the first 75 records. The last selected record will have the distance you are looking for.