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There are only two names on the cover, but a host of people made this book possible.
We would like to thank the entire O’Reilly team for their efforts. They provided such a smooth process that we were able to focus on just the writing. A special thanks goes to our editors, Mike Loukides and Meghan Blanchette, for their guidance and support.
We would also like to thank our review team. The following people generously dedicated their time and energy to read this book in its early state, and their feedback helped shape the text into the finished product you’re reading now:
| Robert Bjornson |
| Nicholas Carriero |
| Jonathan Seidman |
| Paul Teetor |
| Ramesh Venkataramaiah |
| Jed Wing |
Any errors you find in this book belong to us, the authors.
Most of all we thank you, the reader, for your interest in this book. We set out to create the guidebook we wish we’d had when we first tried to give R that parallel, distributed boost. R work is research work, best done with minimal distractions. We hope these chapters help you get up to speed quickly, so you can get R to do what you need with minimal detour from the task at hand.
“You like math? Oh, you need to talk to Mike. Let me introduce you.” I didn’t realize it at the time, but those words were the start of this project. Really. A chance encounter with Mike Loukides led to emails and phone calls and, before I knew it, we’d laid the groundwork for a new book. So first and foremost, a hearty thanks to Betsy and Laurel, who made my connection to Mike.
Conversations with Mike led me to my co-author, Steve Weston. I’m pleased and flattered that he agreed to join me on this adventure.
Thanks as well to the gang at Cafe les Deux Chats, for providing a quiet place to work.
This was my first book project, so I’d like to thank my co-author and editors for putting up with my freshman confusion and mistakes. They were very gracious throughout the project.
I’m very grateful to Nick, Rob, and Jed for taking the time to read my chapters and help me not to make a fool of myself. I also want to thank my wife Diana and daughter Erica for proofreading material that wasn’t on their preferred reading lists.
Finally, I’d like to thank all the authors of the packages that we
discuss in this book. I had a lot of fun reading the source for all
three of the packages that I wrote about. In particular, I’ve always
loved the snow source code, which I studied when
first learning to program in R.