Laura Jamison

Regression to the mean refers to a phenomena where natural variation within an individual can mistakenly appear as meaningful change over time. To illustrate, imagine a patient who comes in for a regular check-up and is found to have high blood sugar levels. This may be cause for concern, and the doctor recommends several dietary adjustments and schedules a follow-up for the next week. During the follow-up visit, the patient’s blood sugar levels have seemingly returned to a normal range.

The term “multilevel data” refers to data organized in a hierarchical structure, where units of analysis are grouped into clusters. For example, in a cross-sectional study, multilevel data could be made up of individual measurements of students from different schools, where students are nested within schools. In a longitudinal study, multilevel data could be made up of multiple time point measurements of individuals, where time points are nested within individuals.

Docker is a software product that allows for the efficient building, packaging, and deployment of applications. It uses containers, which are isolated environments that bundle software and its dependencies. These containers can run an application with all the same software, dependencies, settings, and more as were on the original machine on any other computer without affecting the host system. In this regard Docker is different from a virtual machine in that it does not require a guest operating system.