The inspiration for writing this book came directly from the brilliant work and dedication of many R developers and users, whom I would like to thank first for creating a vibrant and highly-supportive community that nourishes the progress of publicly accessible data analytics and development of R language. However, this book would never be completed if I wasn’t surrounded with love and unconditional support from my partner Ignacio, who always knew how to encourage and motivate me, particularly in moments of my weakness and when I lacked creativity.

I would also like to thank other members of my family, especially my father Peter, who despite not sharing my excitement of data science, always listens patiently to my stories about emerging Big Data technologies and their use cases.

Also, I dedicate this book to my friends and former colleagues from UK Data Service at the University of Essex, where I had an opportunity to work with amazing individuals and experience the best practices in robust data management and processing.

Finally, I highly appreciate the hard work, expertise and feedback offered by many people involved in the creation of this book at Packt Publishing – especially my content development editor Onkar Wani, publishers, and the reviewers, who kindly shared their knowledge with me in order to create a quality and well-received publication.