variance

variance
1. In standard costing and budgetary control, the difference between the standard or budgeted levels of cost or income for an activity and the actual costs incurred or income achieved. If the actual performance is better than standard then a favourable variance results, while if actual performance is worse than standard there is an adverse variance.

2. In statistics, a measure of the dispersion of a distribution of outcomes. It is the square of the standard deviation. See analysis of variance.