Index of dispersion

In probability theory and statistics, the index of dispersion, dispersion index, coefficient of dispersion, relative variance, or variance-to-mean ratio (VMR), like the coefficient of variation, is a normalized measure of the dispersion of a probability distribution: it is a measure used to quantify whether a set of observed occurrences are clustered or dispersed compared to a standard statistical model.

It is defined as the ratio of the variance

σ

2

{\displaystyle \sigma ^{2}}

to the mean

μ

{\displaystyle \mu }

,

D

=

σ

2

μ

.

{\displaystyle D={\sigma ^{2} \over \mu }.}

It is also known as the Fano factor, though this term is sometimes reserved for windowed data (the mean and variance are computed over a subpopulation), where the index of dispersion is used in the special case where the window is infinite. Windowing data is frequently done: the VMR is frequently computed over various intervals in time or small regions in space, which may be called "windows", and the resulting statistic called the Fano factor.

It is only defined when the mean

μ

{\displaystyle \mu }

is non-zero, and is generally only used for positive statistics, such as count data or time between events, or where the underlying distribution is assumed to be the exponential distribution or Poisson distribution.

Terminology

In this context, the observed dataset may consist of the times of occurrence of predefined events, such as earthquakes in a given region over a given magnitude, or of the locations in geographical space of plants of a given species. Details of such occurrences are first converted into counts of the numbers of events or occurrences in each of a set of equal-sized time- or space-regions.

The above defines a dispersion index for counts. A different definition applies for a dispersion index for intervals, where the quantities treated are the lengths of the time-intervals between the events. Common usage is that "index of dispersion" means the dispersion index for counts.