Acknowledgments

 

Several data repositories on the web were helpful, either because of the data sets available there or merely as a source of inspiration. Among the most helpful were

Wherever specific data sets have been used, detailed attribution is given in the text.

Two resources I relied on more than on any other: the excellent collection of the University of Washington libraries (Seattle), and the amazingly comprehensive store of information available at Wikipedia.

Writing a book is a long process, much more involved than writing a collection of independent papers of equal length. One of the lessons I learned during the preparation of this book is this: even if you know that writing a book will take longer than you expect, it still takes longer than you expect!

Handling projects of such nature takes true dedication and courage. I would like to express special appreciation to Marjan Bace and his team at Manning publications for taking this project on and guiding it to completion.