spreads

Spreads is the plural form of spread and can refer to several distinct concepts across different fields. In food, spreads are soft pastes or emulsions intended to be applied on bread, crackers, or vegetables. Sweet varieties include jams, honey, and chocolate hazelnut spreads; savory options include cheese spreads, pesto, and tapenade. Commercial spreads are often packaged in jars or tubs and vary in fat, sugar, and salt content.

In finance and economics, spread denotes a difference or margin between two related prices, rates, or yields. The bid-ask spread, the gap between the highest price a buyer is willing to pay and the lowest price a seller will accept, reflects market liquidity. Other spreads include yield spreads between bonds of different credit quality or maturities and option spreads in derivatives trading. Spreads are typically expressed in basis points or price units.

In epidemiology and public health, spread refers to the transmission of an infectious disease within a population. Key metrics include the reproduction number R0, the growth rate, and generation time, which describe how rapidly a disease can propagate and how interventions may slow it.

In statistics and data analysis, spread (dispersion) measures how data values vary around a central tendency. Common indicators include the range, interquartile range, variance, and standard deviation. These measures describe the variability of a dataset and help compare different distributions.