The correct answer is B. variances.
A variance is the difference between a budgeted amount and an actual result. Variances can be positive or negative. Positive variances indicate that actual results were better than budgeted, while negative variances indicate that actual results were worse than budgeted. Variances can be used to identify areas where performance needs to be improved.
Standard deviation is a measure of how spread out a set of data is. It is calculated by taking the square root of the variance.
Mean average is the average of a set of data. It is calculated by adding up all the values in the set and dividing by the number of values in the set.
Weighted average is the average of a set of data, where each value is given a weight. The weights are usually based on the importance of each value.
In the context of the question, the difference between budgeted amounts and actual results is a variance. This is because the difference is a measure of how far actual results are from the budget.