Homonym: dispersion (Scattering)
Dispersion refers to the process by which particles or waves spread out from a central point. In science, it often describes how light separates into different colors when passing through a medium, like a prism. This phenomenon occurs because different wavelengths of light travel at different speeds, leading to a separation of colors.
In statistics, dispersion measures how much data points vary from the average. Common metrics include range, variance, and standard deviation. These measures help to understand the distribution of data and how spread out or clustered the values are around the mean.