I want to mention and acknowledge two groups of people here: those who actively worked on the book and those who suffered and supported my constantly distracted presence for the last three years while this book project has been under way.
It might be my name on the cover of Practical Recommender Systems, but this book couldn’t have come into existence without the great work of the people at Manning. I want especially to thank Helen Stergius for her relentless help and guidance as my development editor. She and all the others have translated my slightly dyslexic writing into something that teaches people to implement recommenders.
I also want to thank Furkan Kamaci and Valentin Crettaz, my technical proofreaders, and all the reviewers who took the time to read the early versions and helped the manuscript become more connected. They include Adhir Ramjiavan, Alexander Myltsev, Alvin Raj, Amit Lamba, Andrew Collier, Fazel Keshtkar, Jared Duncan, Jaromir Nemec, Martin Beer, Mayur Patil, Mike Dalrymple, Noreen Dertinger, Olivier Ducatteeuw, Peter Hampton, Simeon Leyzerzon, Søren Lind Kristiansen, Steven Parr, Tobias Bürger, Tobias Getrost, and Vipul Gupta.
Many libraries, systems, and packages have been used to write this story, and I’m very grateful to the communities that helped me. I’m also thankful for the tools the open source communities have provided so everything didn’t need to be implemented from the ground up.