[BioGeek]

My Python answer for the second question, where `post` is patrio11's post as input:

    from  collections import defaultdict
    from string import ascii_letters

    d= collections.defaultdict(int)

    for letter in post:
        d[letter] += 1

    print [letter for letter in sorted(d, key=d.get, reverse=True) if letter in ascii_letters][2]

Any comments on improvement for readability or conciseness?

[follower]

Ah, your use of the collections module prompted me to read the docs for it (who would've guessed :) ) which leads to a revision of my other response:

  import string, collections

  s = "your text here"

  print collections.Counter([i for i in s.lower()
                             if i in string.letters]).most_common(3)[-1]