Abstract ONE of the most striking features of present accounting literature may be said to lie in the growing interest paid to the mathematics of variance analysis. This development began in 1953 when Gilbert Amerman published his very famous article on the subject. The variation analysis may be easily tied to an effective budgetary control system by comparing the standard and actual costs of a period with the corresponding budgeted costs. On these lines it is possible to discern the influence that important activity and production mix variations had on the direct materials and labor costs. The analysis of manufacturing overhead variances must be made by cost centers or departments. There are six systems of variance analysis that are of practical and/or theoretical importance, all of them showing the same net variance between actual costs and standard costs of the actual production. The standard variable overhead rate times the difference between the actual hours of the period and the standard hours allowed for actual production may be called the excess hours controllable variance. In some textbooks this difference between the variable budget allowance for standard hours and actual hours is called "efficiency variance."
C. A. M. Weber (Mon,) studied this question.