description of an algorithm or process that takes code-like form while likely not being actual valid source code syntactic sugar programming syntax which does not add new featuresbut makes something more convenient or easier to type acknowledgements it would have been difficult for me to write this book without the support of large number of people on the 'reilly staffi' very grateful for my editors meghan blanchette and julie steele who guided me through the process mike loukides also worked with me in the proposal stages and helped make the book reality received wealth of technical review from large cast of characters in particularmartin blais and hugh white were incredibly helpful in improving the book' examplesclarityand organization from cover to cover james longdrew conwayfernando perezbrian grangerthomas kluyveradam kleinjosh kleinchang sheand stefan van der walt each reviewed one or more providing pointed feedback from many different perspectives got many great ideas for examples and data sets from friends and colleagues in the data communityamong themmike dewarjeff hammerbacherjames johndrowkristian lumadam kleinhilary masonchang sheand ashley williams am of course indebted to the many leaders in the open source scientific python community who've built the foundation for my development work and gave encouragement while was writing this bookthe ipython core team (fernando perezbrian grangermin ragan-kellythomas kluyverand others)john hunterskipper seaboldtravis oliphantpeter wangeric jonesrobert kernjosef perktoldfrancesc altedchris fonnesbeckand too many others to mention several other people provided great deal of supportideasand encouragement along the waydrew conwaysean taylorgiuseppe paleologojared landerdavid epsteinjohn krowasjoshua bloomden pilsworthjohn myles-whiteand many others 've forgotten ' also like to thank number of people from my formative years firstmy former aqr colleagues who've cheered me on in my pandas work over the yearsalex reyfmanmichael wongtim sargenoktay kurbanovmatthew tschantzroni israelovmichael katzchris ugaprasad ramananted squareand hoon kim lastlymy academic advisors haynes miller (mitand mike west (dukeon the personal sidecasey dinkin provided invaluable day-to-day support during the writing processtolerating my highs and lows as hacked together the final draft on preliminaries www it-ebooks info