Writing a book is one of the most interesting and challenging endeavors one can take up. We grossly underestimated the effort it would take and the fulfillment it brings. This book would not have been possible without the support of our families, who granted us enough leeway in this time-consuming activity. We would like to thank the team at RapidMiner, who provided great help on everything, ranging from technical support to reviewing the chapters to answering questions on features of the product. Our special thanks to Ingo Mierswa for setting the stage for the book through the foreword. We greatly appreciate the thoughtful and insightful comments from our technical reviewers: Doug Schrimager from Slalom Consulting, Steven Reagan from L&L Products, and Tobias Malbrecht from RapidMiner. Thanks to Mike Skinner of Intel for providing expert inputs on the subject of Model Evaluation. We had great support and stewardship from the Morgan Kaufmann team: Steve Elliot, Kaitlin Herbert and Punithavathy Govindaradjane. Thanks to our colleagues and friends for all the productive discussions and suggestions regarding this project.