How to interpret highly variable genes plot in Scanpy?

Question

[Pratik]

Hey ya'll,

How do I interpret this plot in the Scanpy Tutorial https://scanpy-tutorials.readthedocs.io/en/latest/pbmc3k.html:

sc.pp.highly_variable_genes(adata, min_mean=0.0125, max_mean=3, min_disp=0.5)

extracting highly variable genes
    finished (0:00:00)
--> added
    'highly_variable', boolean vector (adata.var)
    'means', float vector (adata.var)
    'dispersions', float vector (adata.var)
    'dispersions_norm', float vector (adata.var)

I understand that the algorithm is identifying highly variable genes, but I don't quite understand what the y-axis means by

dispersions of genes

Any help would be appreciated!

[mt_pereira]

Hello! I am going through scanpy and have the same doubt. Have you reached a conclusion on how to interpret the data presented by these graphs?