I want to also point out that doing statistics in Python is currently a chicken-and-egg problem. You need the foundation of statistical data structures and algo

I want to also point out that doing statistics in Python is currently a chicken-and-egg problem. You need the foundation of statistical data structures and algorithms to enable people to implement their models and research. NumPy and SciPy by themselves just don't compare with base R. So I've been trying to a) fill that gap and b) build tools that are quite a lot superior to R's. I use R myself but I have no intention of "copying" or "replicating" R but rather figuring out what what are the fundamental data manipulation / statistical computing challenges and building tools that address them.