📉 Dispersion Calculator
Measure how spread out your data really is. Enter up to eight values to get the range, variance, standard deviation, mean absolute deviation, and coefficient of variation.
What This Calculator Does
Dispersion measures describe how spread out a set of values is around its center, which is just as important as the average itself when interpreting data.
The Formulas
- Range = maximum value − minimum value
- Variance = average of the squared differences from the mean
- Standard Deviation = square root of variance
- Mean Absolute Deviation (MAD) = average of the absolute (unsquared) differences from the mean
- Coefficient of Variation (CV) = (standard deviation ÷ mean) × 100%
Standard deviation and variance are the most common dispersion measures and are sensitive to outliers because differences are squared, while mean absolute deviation treats all deviations proportionally. The coefficient of variation is useful for comparing spread between data sets with different units or very different means, since it expresses spread as a percentage of the mean. For general educational and analytical use.