Python has some FP features. More importantly, it's incredibly easy to learn, available on just about every platform (JVM users and .Net users can use it, Mac, Linux, Windows, etc).
Yes, but having "some FP features" is a far cry from being able to use FP to do lots of reasoning about your program.
It's not intended to be a complex statistical model. It's intended to replace XML Files that may have included calculations, with a system that allows people to plug their assumptions into the program and get an answer, rather than parsing XML and turning that into a program.
My understanding is that the type of calculations they're talking about, if you need complex Functional Programming you're doing it wrong.
Yes, but having "some FP features" is a far cry from being able to use FP to do lots of reasoning about your program.