[Jcol2]

Spark has a python API and python has a bigger ecosystem for exploratory data analysis than spark.

Also python has a big data interface with out of core matrices and tables as well as a compiler than can speed numerical code, with a just a function decorator, to C like speeds. The former is an interface to the latter.

http://blaze.pydata.org/docs/dev/index.html https://github.com/numba/numba