Thank you Shubhangi Dhamgaye, Meeta Rajani, Shivani Mistry, and the entire team at Packt for their help in bringing this project to fruition. Without you, this book would never have come to pass.

I'm grateful to Dan Hammer, my Packt reviewer, for his valuable perspective as a practicing data scientist, and to those other brave souls who patiently read through the very rough early (and not-so-early) drafts. Foremost among these are Éléonore Mayola, Paul Butcher, and Jeremy Hoyland. Your feedback was not always easy to hear, but it made the book so much better than it would otherwise have been.

Thank you to the wonderful team at MastodonC who tackled a pre-release version of this book in their company book club, especially Éléonore Mayola, Jase Bell, and Elise Huard. I'm grateful to Francine Bennett for her advice early on—which helped to shape the structure of the book—and also to Bruce Durling, Neale Swinnerton, and Chris Adams for their company during the otherwise lonely weekends spent writing in the office.

Thank you to my friends from the machine learning study group: Sam Joseph, Geoff Hogg, and Ben Taylor for reading the early drafts and providing feedback suitable for Clojure newcomers; and also to Luke Snape and Tom Coupland of the Bristol Clojurians for providing the opportunity to test the material out on its intended audience.

A heartfelt thanks to my dad, Nicholas, for interpreting my vague scribbles into the fantastic figures you see in this book, and to my mum, Jacqueline, and sister, Mary, for being such patient listeners in the times I felt like thinking aloud. Last, but by no means least, thank you to the Nuggets of Wynford Road, Russell and Wendy, for the tea and sympathy whenever it occasionally became a bit too much. I look forward to seeing much more of you both from now on.