1Things that were together becoming scattered or spread apart; also the deliberate spreading out of something that was concentrated (e.g. diversifying investments).
昼休みになると、学生たちは校庭のあちこちに分散した。
At lunch break, the students dispersed across the schoolyard.
リスクを減らすために、投資先を分散するのが賢明だ。
To reduce risk, it's wise to diversify where you invest.
人口が都市部に集中せず、地方に分散するよう政策が進められている。
Policies are being pursued so that the population disperses to rural areas instead of concentrating in cities.
作業を複数のチームに分散すれば、負担が軽くなる。
If you distribute the work among multiple teams, the burden becomes lighter.
2In statistics, a measure of how spread out a set of data is — the variance.
標本の分散を計算して、データのばらつきを調べる。
Compute the sample variance to examine how spread out the data are.
分散が小さいほど、データは平均値の近くに集まっている。
The smaller the variance, the more the data cluster near the mean.
3In physics and chemistry, the dispersion of particles, light, or waves — such as light splitting into colors or a solute spreading through a solvent.
ガラスのプリズムに光を通すと分散して虹のように見える。
When light passes through a glass prism, it disperses and appears rainbow-colored.
コロイド中の粒子の分散状態を調べる実験を行った。
We conducted an experiment to examine the dispersion state of particles in a colloid.