Though this book aims to explain everything from first principles, it would be advantageous (though not strictly required) to have a basic knowledge of mathematical notation and basic programming skills in a language that can be used for data transformation, such as SQL, Base SAS, R, or Python. A good website for beginners to learn about SQL and Python is https://www.w3schools.com.
It is assumed that you have access to a physical or virtual machine provisioned with the CentOS Linux 7 (or Red Hat Linux) operating system. If you do not, Chapter 2, Setting Up a Local Development Environment, describes the various options available to provision a CentOS 7 virtual machine (VM), including via cloud-computing platforms ...
