I would strongly recommend looking at R. I started using Python and Pandas and when I ran into issues with work requiring M$ Office documents R just amazes.
Also the amazing growth in R in just the last few years. http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/R.html
(O know that ranking is not the greatest argument for a language BUT it does show (somewhat) its growth. Specifically the flexibility of R (12 ways to do one things) has allowed it to evolve quickly and the libraries are just amazing. RStudio has changed R with Hadley Wickham's ggplot2, dplyr, reshape2, tidyr and etc. It just makes the the language do so much and change so quickly.
I use to be in love with all things Python and now I still respect Python and Pandas but I kind of gone to more domain specific tools.
To put this simply, dplyr's syntax is set up to create streamlined workflows. All of the major data management tasks (sort, subset, group, summarize) are easy to do. And they can be "chained" together (much like using pipes in Unix).
Ggplot (another R package) is an amazing data visualization tool. The syntax has a deep underlying structure, based on the Grammar of Graphics theoretical framework. I won’t go into that too much, but suffice it to say, when you learn the ggplot2 syntax, you’re actually learning how to think about data visualization in a very deep way. You’ll eventually understand how to create complex visualizations without much effort.
GGplot and dplyr are the reason I settled on R (instead of Python). When you use them together (again, using "chaining") you can explore your data rapidly and also create really high quality analyses.
Also the amazing growth in R in just the last few years. http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/R.html (O know that ranking is not the greatest argument for a language BUT it does show (somewhat) its growth. Specifically the flexibility of R (12 ways to do one things) has allowed it to evolve quickly and the libraries are just amazing. RStudio has changed R with Hadley Wickham's ggplot2, dplyr, reshape2, tidyr and etc. It just makes the the language do so much and change so quickly.
I use to be in love with all things Python and now I still respect Python and Pandas but I kind of gone to more domain specific tools.