Acknowledgments

This book would not be possible without the support and guidance from the editorial team at Manning Publications. We are grateful to Christina Taylor for her hard work and dedication; we could not have hoped for a better development editor. We were also fortunate to work with John Hyaduck and Kostas Passadis, whose insightful feedback helped make this book the best it can be.

We also want to thank the Manning staff who worked behind the scenes on MEAP, promotion, and other essential aspects of making this publication a reality: Brian Sawyer, Christopher Kaufmann, Aleksandar Dragosavljević, Rebecca Rinehart, Melissa Ice, Candace Gillhoolley, and many others.

Above all, we are grateful to all our readers who provided invaluable feedback on the early drafts of the manuscript.

Jakub Langr

If this book is a success, I am forever grateful to my former team at Pearson, who have been great mentors and friends to this day—Andy, Kostas, Andreas, Dario, Marek, and Hubert. In 2013, they offered me my first data science internship, thus irrevocably changing the course of my life and career.

Words cannot express my gratitude to all the amazing people of Entrepreneur First, and especially to Dr. Pavan Kumar for being a wonderful friend, flatmate, and colleague.

I would also like to thank my friends and colleagues from Filtered.com, University of Oxford, ICP, and the R&D team at Mudano, who are all amazing people.

There are many more people I would like to thank who have been positive influences, but alas, word limit is a cruel lord. So, thank you to my friends and family for sticking by me through thick and thin.

If this book is not a success, I would like to dedicate the book to the foxes of Carminia Road because, first, what makes that kind of hellish noise at 2 a.m.? And second, I never have to wonder, what does the fox say?

Vladimir Bok

I am grateful to James McCaffrey, Roland Fernandez, Sayan Pathak, and the rest of the AI-611 staff at Microsoft Research for the opportunity and privilege to receive mentor-ship and instruction from some of the greatest minds in machine learning and AI. My gratitude also goes to my AI-611 teammates, Tim Balbekov and Rishav Mukherji, for joining me on the journey, and to our mentors, Nebojsa Jojic and Po-Sen Huang, for their guidance.

I would also like to thank my college advisor, Prof. Krzysztof Gajos, for allowing me to enroll in his graduate research seminar even though I had not fulfilled the course prerequisites; it was an invaluable first exposure to the world of hands-on computer science research.

Special thanks to my colleagues at Intent for their support and encouragement—and for bearing with my late-night email responses as many of my evenings were spent writing and doing research.

I am deeply grateful to Kimberly Pope for believing in the young Czech high school student all those years ago and selecting me for a scholarship that changed my life. It is a debt I can never repay.

Lastly, thank you to my family and friends for being there for me. Always.