Mike X Cohen - Practical Linear Algebra for Data Science

I have a confession: I really dislike writing acknolwedgments sections. Its not because I lack gratitude or believe that I have no one to thankquite the opposite: I have too many people to thank, and I dont know where to begin, who to list by name, and who to leave out. Shall I thank my parents for their role in shaping me into the kind of person who wrote this book? Perhaps their parents for shaping my parents? I remember my fourth-grade teacher telling me I should be a writer when I grow up. (I dont remember her name and Im not sure when I will grow up, but perhaps she had some influence on this book.) I wrote most of this book during remote-working trips to the Canary Islands; perhaps I should thank the pilots who flew me there? Or the electricians who installed the wiring at the coworking spaces? Perhaps I should be grateful to zdemir Pasha for his role in popularizing coffee, which both facilitated and distracted me from writing. And lets not forget the farmers who grew the delicious food that sustained me and kept me happy.

You can see where this is going: my fingers did the typing, but it took the entirety and history of human civilization to create me and the environment that allowed me to write this bookand that allowed you to read this book. So, thanks humanity!

But OK, I can also devote one paragraph to a more traditional acknowledgments section. Most importantly, I am grateful to all my students in my live-taught university and summer-school courses, and my Udemy online courses, for trusting me with their education and for motivating me to continue improving my explanations of applied math and other technical topics. I am also grateful for Jess Haberman, the acquisitions editor at OReilly who made first contact to ask if I was interested in writing this book. Shira Evans (development editor), Jonathon Owen (production editor), Elizabeth Oliver (copy editor), Kristen Brown (manager of content services), and two expert technical reviewers were directly instrumental in transforming my keystrokes into the book youre now reading. Im sure this list is incomplete because other people who helped publish this book are unknown to me or because Ive forgotten them due to memory loss at my extreme old age. To anyone reading this who feels they made even an infinitesimal contribution to this book: thank you.