Which of the following is a measure of dispersion?

• A. Standard deviation
• B. Mode
• C. Median
• D. Mean

Answer: (A)

Dispersion refers to how spread out the data are. The standard deviation measures this spread by showing, on average, how far each value is from the mean. A small standard deviation means the data cluster closely around the mean; a large one indicates more variability. This makes standard deviation a true measure of dispersion and widely used to compare variability across datasets.

The other statistics describe central tendency—the typical or central value of the data. The mode is the most frequent value, the median is the middle value, and the mean is the arithmetic average. While they tell you where data tend to center, they don’t quantify how spread out the values are, which is why they aren’t dispersion measures.