Second-quartile stocks did best with an 11.2% compound annual return through January 2002, followed by the third quartile at 9.1%.

FORBES: Money & Investing

Investors would have been better off in the third quartile, where sales rose a still-impressive 26% a year.

FORBES: Magazine Article

In one generation it has lifted most of the third quartile of the world's population (by income) from poverty to the middle class.

FORBES: Magazine Article

Hardware supplier Fastenal was in the third quartile and rose fourteenfold.

FORBES: Magazine Article

What Ramezani found was that companies that are consistently in the third quartile of growth--stalwarts like Wal-Mart, AutoZone and Intel--had stocks that far outperformed their faster-growing cohorts in the fourth quartile, such as Merisel, Limited and Toys "R" Us.

FORBES: Whats the Hurry?

Economists reckoned the uplift in happiness at that time was equivalent to 60% of the increase in wellbeing people tend to experience when they cross the line of median income, from the third income quartile into the second one.

BBC: Going for the happiness gold