Facilities that focus on manufacturing and production track two kinds of costs: fixed costs and variable costs. The variable costs are those that change when production levels change: raw materials, ...

Variance analysis, also described as analysis of variance or ANOVA, involves assessing the difference between two figures. It is a tool applied to financial and operational data that aims to identify ...

A categorical variable is defined as one that can assume only a limited number of values. For example, a person's sex is a categorical variable that can assume one of two values. Variables with levels ...

Christenson, Charles. "Managing against Expectations (A): An Introduction to Profit Variance Analysis." Harvard Business School Background Note 182-013, July 1981.

Many finance teams treat variance analysis as a box-checking exercise: Set a threshold, flag the swing, move on. That’s why so many controllers spend days chasing noise while risks slip through. It’s ...

Adam Hayes, Ph.D., CFA, is a financial writer with 15+ years Wall Street experience as a derivatives trader. Besides his extensive derivative trading expertise, Adam is an expert in economics and ...

Just as PROC GLM is the flagship procedure for fixed-effect linear models, the MIXED procedure is the flagship procedure for random- and mixed-effect linear models. PROC MIXED fits a variety of mixed ...

Marshall Hargrave is a stock analyst and writer with 10+ years of experience covering stocks and markets, as well as analyzing and valuing companies. Dr. JeFreda R. Brown is a financial consultant, ...