Measures of dispersion may be defined as the degree of spread or scatteredness of the observations. In other words dispersion is the measure of the variation of the items. Dispersion is the spread is the degree of the scatter or variation of the variables about a central value.

The measures of dispersion can be categorized as the

Absolute measures of dispersion:

The measures of dispersion which are expressed in terms of the original units of a series are termed as absolute measures. Such measures are not suitable for comparing the Variability of the two distributions which are expressed in different units of measurement.

Relative measures of dispersion:

Relative measures od dispersion are obtained as the ratios or percentages and are thus pure numbers independent of the units of measurement. For comparing the variability of the two distributions we compute the relative measures of dispersion instead of absolute measures of dispersion.

 

The various measures of dispersion are as follows:

Range

Quartile deviation or semi-interquartile range

Mean deviation

Standard deviation

Lorenz curve

 

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