dispersion

/dɪˈspɜrʒən/
noun
  1. The process of spreading or scattering things over an area.
    • Urban planning aims to reduce the dispersion of traffic across residential streets.
    • The dispersion of seeds by wind helps plants colonize new areas.
    • The dispersion of light through a prism creates a rainbow.
  2. A mixture in which small particles of one substance are spread throughout another substance.
    • Paint is a dispersion of pigment particles in a liquid.
    • The chemist prepared a stable dispersion of nanoparticles in water.
    • Milk is a natural dispersion of fat globules in a watery fluid.
  3. In statistics, the degree to which data points are spread out from the average.
    • Standard deviation is a common measure of dispersion in a data set.
    • Low dispersion means most values are close to the mean.
    • The dispersion of test scores was higher this year, showing a wider range of results.
What does "dispersion" mean? | whatsthatwordmean | whatsthatwordmean