FTCE General Knowledge Math Practice Test 2025 – Complete Exam Prep

The correct answer is the term that specifically quantifies how much the values in a data set vary from the mean. Standard deviation is a key statistical measure that indicates the average distance of each data point from the mean. A low standard deviation means the data points are close to the mean, while a high standard deviation indicates a wider spread of values.

In contrast, while variance is also a measure of dispersion, it represents the average of the squared differences from the mean, making it mathematically related to standard deviation but not directly describing dispersion in the same way. The range simply measures the difference between the maximum and minimum values in a data set, which does not provide an average dispersion value. Standard score, on the other hand, is a way to express a data point's position relative to the mean in terms of standard deviations but does not measure dispersion itself. Therefore, standard deviation remains the most direct measure of dispersion regarding how data values spread around the mean.