The phrase "a close variant of" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used when discussing something that is similar or nearly identical to another item, often in contexts like linguistics, biology, or product descriptions.
Example: "The term 'automobile' is a close variant of 'car,' both referring to motor vehicles."
Alternatives: "a near equivalent of" or "a similar version of".
As a close variant of models long used for insurance risk, it retains the analytical tractability for which the insurance models were designed.
(Ozick cleverly hooks Julian up with a close variant of the eccentric and bewigged Alfred Chester, a friend of her own literary youth).
It eventually beat zolpidem to market, as the first in a new category of sleep medication: "z-drugs," or non-benzodiazepines. (Lunesta, approved by the F.D.A. in 2004, is a close variant of zopiclone).
The reverse in policy from the US department of agriculture is now expected by Salmond's government after the World Organisation for Animal Health decided that sheep lungs no longer carry a risk of contamination by scrapie, a close variant of mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy.The latest sales figures suggest haggis is more popular now than ever.
Foote uses a close variant of a plain line from Lee ("I swear, Scout, you act more like a girl all the time"), rather than the archly implausible line ("You act so much like a girl it's mortifyin' ") that she also makes available.
Abstraction coincides with (or is a close variant of) generalisation.
Ideally, the particular mix of methods should not matter: adding a duplicate (or a very close variant) of one method should not penalize the ranking of lesser methods.
A local election was imminent, and in recent weeks these performers had been visiting village after village; among them, they performed the same show, or some close variant of it, four hundred and sixty times.
While a few of these groups had an average identity close to 1, indicating very similar sequences, most cliques had a much lower average residue identity, confirming that the sequences therein were not just close variants of a single sequence produced by sequencing errors.
This is also a fairly minor issue as most models use close variants of this approach (although a few take more exotic attitudes like counting all third-party votes against the incumbent party).
In that context, we interpreted the response (and close variants of it) as a suggestion for increased law enforcement and punishment.
