About the Authors
John Paul Mueller is a freelance author and technical editor. He has writing in his blood, having produced 121 books and more than 600 articles to date. The topics range from networking to artificial intelligence and from database management to heads-down programming. Some of his current books include discussions of data science, machine learning, and algorithms. He also writes about computer languages such as C++, C#, and Python. His technical editing skills have helped more than 70 authors refine the content of their manuscripts. John has provided technical editing services to a variety of magazines, performed various kinds of consulting, and he writes certification exams. Be sure to read John’s blog at http://blog.johnmuellerbooks.com/. You can reach John on the Internet at [email protected]. John also has a website at http://www.johnmuellerbooks.com/.
Luca Massaron is a data scientist and a marketing research director who specializes in multivariate statistical analysis, machine learning, and customer insight, with over a decade of experience in solving real-world problems and generating value for stakeholders by applying reasoning, statistics, data mining, and algorithms. From being a pioneer of web audience analysis in Italy to achieving the rank of top ten Kaggler on kaggle.com, he has always been passionate about everything regarding data and analysis and about demonstrating the potentiality of data-driven knowledge discovery to both experts and nonexperts. Favoring simplicity over unnecessary sophistication, he believes that a lot can be achieved in data science by understanding and practicing the essentials of it. Luca is also a Google Developer Expert (GDE) in machine learning.
John’s Dedication
This book is dedicated to all of the people who have supported me through the various transitions in my life.
Luca’s Dedication
I dedicate this book to my wife, Yukiko, whom I always find curious and ready to marvel at the wonders of this amazing and baffling technological world. With love.
John’s Acknowledgments
Thanks to my wife, Rebecca. Even though she is gone now, her spirit is in every book I write and in every word that appears on the page. She believed in me when no one else would.
Rod Stephens deserves thanks for his technical edit of this book. He greatly added to the accuracy and depth of the material you see here. Rod’s critical thinking skills force me to truly think through all the book elements. He’s also the sanity check for my work.
Matt Wagner, my agent, deserves credit for helping me get the contract in the first place and taking care of all the details that most authors don’t really consider. I always appreciate his assistance. It’s good to know that someone wants to help.
A number of people read all or part of this book to help me refine the approach, test the coding examples, and generally provide input that all readers wish they could have. These unpaid volunteers helped in ways too numerous to mention here. I especially appreciate the efforts of Eva Beattie, who provided general input, read the entire book, and selflessly devoted herself to this project.
Finally, I would like to thank Kelsey Baird, Susan Christophersen, Michelle Hacker, and the rest of the editorial and production staff.
Luca’s Acknowledgments
My first greatest thanks to my family, Yukiko and Amelia, for their support, sacrifices, and loving patience during the long days/nights, weeks, and months I’ve been involved in working on this book.
I thank all the editorial and production staff at Wiley, in particular Kelsey Baird and Susan Christophersen, for their great professionalism and support in all the phases of writing this book of the For Dummies series.
Publisher’s Acknowledgments
Senior Acquisitions Editor: Kelsey Baird
Project and Copy Editor: Susan Christophersen
Technical Editor: Rod Stephens
Production Editor: Mohammed Zafar Ali
Cover Image: © Kobol75/Shutterstock