From looking at what I think is the Dockerfile for that image (https://github.com/docker-library/python/blob/b1512ead24c6b111506a8d4229134a29da240597/2.7/alpine

From looking at what I think is the Dockerfile for that image (https://github.com/docker-library/python/blob/b1512ead24c6b111506a8d4229134a29da240597/2.7/alpine3.6/Dockerfile https://github.com/docker-library/python/blob/b1512ead24c6b1...), that image is complex; it's downloading & building Python in it and adding & removing a dev toolchain, in a few different layers. I'm not surprised that I got something a lot smaller from just running `apk add python3.6`, although as a result they are not comparing apples to apples; their minideb example does pretty much exactly the equivalent (i.e. downloading the distro-provided package, not compiling it within their image).