The split-apply-combine framework dealing with group by tasks (http://www.jstatsoft.org/v40/i01/paper http://www.jstatsoft.org/v40/i01/paper, not that there are

The split-apply-combine framework dealing with group by tasks (http://www.jstatsoft.org/v40/i01/paper http://www.jstatsoft.org/v40/i01/paper, not that there aren't other precedents) for one. But generally, Wes has used R to figure out what people want to do, and then ported an elegant interface to python.