Acknowledgments

First and foremost, I want to thank Michael Noll, who pushed me to write this book. He provided invaluable insights into how to structure the content of the book, reviewed my early chapter drafts, and helped mold the book. I can’t express how much his support and encouragement has helped me throughout the process.

I’m also indebted to Cynthia Kane, my development editor at Manning, who coached me through writing this book and provided invaluable feedback on my work. Among the many notable “aha!” moments I had when working with Cynthia, the biggest one was when she steered me into using visual aids to help explain some of the complex concepts in this book.

All of the Manning staff were a pleasure to work with, and a special shout out goes to Troy Mott, Nick Chase, Tara Walsh, Bob Herbstman, Michael Stephens, Marjan Bace, Maureen Spencer, and Kevin Sullivan.

I also want to say a big thank you to all the reviewers of this book: Adam Kawa, Andrea Tarocchi, Anna Lahoud, Arthur Zubarev, Edward Ribeiro, Fillipe Massuda, Gerd Koenig, Jeet Marwah, Leon Portman, Mohamed Diouf, Muthuswamy Manigandan, Rodrigo Abreu, and Serega Sheypack. Jonathan Siedman, the primary technical reviewer, did a great job of reviewing the entire book.

Many thanks to Josh Wills, the creator of Crunch, who kindly looked over the chapter that covered that topic. And more thanks go to Josh Patterson, who reviewed my Mahout chapter.