• Dispersion is a statistical term for the variability of a distribution around a mean or other central trends. Actuaries and risk managers often develop and analyze this to determine risk volatility. The smaller the dispersion of the distribution, the more likely it is that actual results or losses will fall within a certain range of this central trend, and as a result there will be less risk volatility. A large spread of results means less confidence in predicting a particular outcome. Statistics that are measures of this variability include range, variance, and standard deviation.