Pythonic way to sum n-th list element?

[Steven Taschuk]

Quoth Alex Martelli:
  [...]
> "sum([y[1] for y in x])" would be very simple and direct, IMHO; the
> "same" thing expressed with "reduce(operator.add,[y[1] for y in x])"
> may only feel "simple and direct" to PhD's in maths -- it feels
> _abstruse_ to most people, in my opinion.

What if operator.add were changed to take any number of arguments?
Then you could write
    operator.add(*[y[1] for y in x])
Clear?  Abstruse?

Btw, I don't know about most people, but I don't have a PhD in
math, and reduce(operator.add, L) seems simple and clear to me.
(I do agree that there is a point beyond which abstraction brings
diminishing returns; but reduce is well inside that limit, imho.)

-- 
Steven Taschuk                            staschuk at telusplanet.net
"Our analysis begins with two outrageous benchmarks."
  -- Clinger et al., "Implementation strategies for continuations"