[kgwgk]

"Pretty close" as long as you stay within the region of common functionality. I wouldn't say it's a clone.

[baldfat]

That is true. I actually started my journey with Pandas and then switched to R for the ecco-system and zero based for data science drove me nuts.

But I do feel that the goal is a clone.

"Python has long been great for data munging and preparation, but less so for data analysis and modeling. pandas helps fill this gap, enabling you to carry out your entire data analysis workflow in Python without having to switch to a more domain specific language like R." http://pandas.pydata.org/