Which term describes the spread of a data set?

Variance is the term that describes the spread of a data set. It is a statistical measure that calculates how much the values in a dataset differ from the mean (average) of that dataset. By squaring the differences between each data point and the mean, variance provides insight into how spread out the values are, which indicates the level of dispersion or variability within the dataset. A higher variance suggests a wider spread of data points, while a lower variance indicates that the data points are closer to the mean.

The other terms, like mean, median, and mode, do not specifically measure spread. The mean is the average of the data points, the median is the middle value when the data is arranged in order, and the mode is the most frequently occurring value in the dataset. While these measures summarize the central tendency of the data, they do not convey information about the variability or dispersion of the values. Therefore, variance is the most appropriate term for describing the spread of a dataset.