About the Authors

Tomasz Drabas is a Data Scientist working for Microsoft and currently residing in the Seattle area. He has over 13 years of experience in data analytics and data science in numerous fields: advanced technology, airlines, telecommunications, finance, and consulting he gained while working on three continents: Europe, Australia, and North America. While in Australia, Tomasz has been working on his PhD in Operations Research with a focus on choice modeling and revenue management applications in the airline industry.

At Microsoft, Tomasz works with big data on a daily basis, solving machine learning problems such as anomaly detection, churn prediction, and pattern recognition using Spark.

Tomasz has also authored the Practical Data Analysis Cookbook published by Packt Publishing in 2016.

I would like to thank my family: Rachel, Skye, and Albert—you are the love of my life and I cherish every day I spend with you! Thank you for always standing by me and for encouraging me to push my career goals further and further. Also, to my family and my in-laws for putting up with me (in general).

There are many more people that have influenced me over the years that I would have to write another book to thank them all. You know who you are and I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart!

However, I would not have gotten through my PhD if it was not for Czesia Wieruszewska; Czesiu - dziękuję za Twoją pomoc bez której nie rozpocząłbym mojej podróży po Antypodach. Along with Krzys Krzysztoszek, you guys have always believed in me! Thank you!

Denny Lee is a Principal Program Manager at Microsoft for the Azure DocumentDB team—Microsoft's blazing fast, planet-scale managed document store service.  He is a hands-on distributed systems and data science engineer with more than 18 years of experience developing Internet-scale infrastructure, data platforms, and predictive analytics systems for both on-premise and cloud environments.

He has extensive experience of building greenfield teams as well as turnaround/change catalyst. Prior to joining the Azure DocumentDB team, Denny worked as a Technology Evangelist at Databricks; he has been working with Apache Spark since 0.5. He was also the Senior Director of Data Sciences Engineering at Concur, and was on the incubation team that built Microsoft's Hadoop on Windows and Azure service (currently known as HDInsight). Denny also has a Masters in Biomedical Informatics from Oregon Health and Sciences University and has architected and implemented powerful data solutions for enterprise healthcare customers for the last 15 years.

I would like to thank my wonderful spouse, Hua-Ping, and my awesome daughters, Isabella and Samantha. You are the ones who keep me grounded and help me reach for the stars!