acknowledgments

This is the section where I express my gratitude to the people who helped me in this journey. It’s also the section where you have a tendency to forget people, so if you feel left out, I am sorry. Really sorry. This book has been a tremendous effort, but doing it alone would probably have resulted in a 2-3 star book on Amazon, instead of the five star rating you will give soon (this is a call to action, thanks!).

I’d like to start by thanking the teams at work who trusted me on this project, starting with Zaloni (Anupam Rakshit and Tufail Khan) Lumeris (Jon Farn, Surya Koduru, Noel Foster, Divya Penmetsa, Srini Gaddam, and Bryce Tutt; all whom almost blind fully followed me on the Spark bandwagon), the people at Veracity Solutions, and my new team at Advance Auto Parts.

Thanks to Mary Parker of the Department of Statistics at the University of Texas at Austin and Cristiana Straccialana Parada. Their contributions helped clarify some sections.