What is dispersion of repeated results about the mean?

• A. Imprecision
• B. Precision
• C. Accuracy
• D. Inaccuracy

Answer: (A)

Dispersion of repeated results around the mean reflects imprecision. When you repeat measurements under the same conditions, the mean serves as the central value, and how far the individual results spread from that center shows how consistent the method is. A small spread means high precision (low imprecision); a large spread means low precision (high imprecision). This concept focuses on how tightly results cluster, not on how close the mean is to the true value. Accuracy would describe how close the mean is to the true value, and you can have high precision (tight clustering) but low accuracy if the mean is biased away from the true value. Quantitatively, dispersion is often expressed by the standard deviation or the range.