Final answer:
The statistic that measures the dispersion of a dataset relative to its mean is the standard deviation. It is a key measure that indicates how much the data values are spread out from the mean, with a higher standard deviation signifying greater spread.
Step-by-step explanation:
A statistic that measures the dispersion of a dataset relative to its mean is called the standard deviation. The standard deviation is a measure of how spread out the numbers in a data set are. If the standard deviation is low, the data points tend to be very close to the mean of the data set. Conversely, a high standard deviation indicates that the data points are spread out over a wider range of values.
The standard deviation provides a numerical measure of the overall amount of variation in a data set, allowing us to see whether a particular data value is close to or far from the mean. It is always positive or zero and can be calculated for both sample and population data sets. The calculation of standard deviation is integral in the fields of statistics and probability, often utilized to gauge the variability or volatility of a set of data.