Alex Tellez is a life-long data hacker/enthusiast with a passion for data science and its application to business problems. He has a wealth of experience working across multiple industries, including banking, health care, online dating, human resources, and online gaming. Alex has also given multiple talks at various AI/machine learning conferences, in addition to lectures at universities about neural networks. When he’s not neck-deep in a textbook, Alex enjoys spending time with family, riding bikes, and utilizing machine learning to feed his French wine curiosity!
First and foremost, I’d like to thank my co-author, Michal, for helping me write this book. As fellow ML enthusiasts, cyclists, runners, and fathers, we both developed a deeper understanding of each other through this endeavor, which has taken well over one year to create. Simply put, this book would not have been possible without Michal’s support and encouragement.
Next, I’d like to thank my mom, dad, and elder brother, Andres, who have been there every step of the way from day 1 until now. Without question, my elder brother continues to be my hero and is someone that I will forever look up to as being a guiding light. Of course, no acknowledgements would be finished without giving thanks to my beautiful wife, Denise, and daughter, Miya, who have provided the love and support to continue the writing of this book during nights and weekends. I cannot emphasize enough how much you both mean to me and how you guys are the inspiration and motivation that keeps this engine running. To my daughter, Miya, my hope is that you can pick this book up and one day realize that your old man isn’t quite as silly as I appear to let on.
Last but not least, I’d also like to give thanks to you, the reader, for your interest in this exciting field using this incredible technology. Whether you are a seasoned ML expert, or a newcomer to the field looking to gain a foothold, you have come to the right book and my hope is that you get as much out of this as Michal and I did in writing this work.
Max Pumperla is a data scientist and engineer specializing in deep learning and its applications. He currently works as a deep learning engineer at Skymind and is a co-founder of aetros.com. Max is the author and maintainer of several Python packages, including elephas, a distributed deep learning library using Spark. His open source footprint includes contributions to many popular machine learning libraries, such as keras, deeplearning4j, and hyperopt. He holds a PhD in algebraic geometry from the University of Hamburg.
Michal Malohlava, creator of Sparkling Water, is a geek and the developer; Java, Linux, programming languages enthusiast who has been developing software for over 10 years. He obtained his PhD from Charles University in Prague in 2012, and post doctorate from Purdue University.
During his studies, he was interested in the construction of not only distributed but also embedded and real-time, component-based systems, using model-driven methods and domain-specific languages. He participated in the design and development of various systems, including SOFA and Fractal component systems and the jPapabench control system.
Now, his main interest is big data computation. He participates in the development of the H2O platform for advanced big data math and computation, and its embedding into Spark engine, published as a project called Sparkling Water.