A set of 3 python scripts that I used to solve embed.ly's programming challenge.

problem1.py

def digit_sum(num):
    return sum(map(int, str(num)))

n = cur_num = 1
while (digit_sum(cur_num*n) != 8001):
    cur_num = cur_num*n
    n += 1
print n

problem2.py

from BeautifulSoup import BeautifulSoup, SoupStrainer
import math, requests, re
from collections import deque

r = requests.get('http://apply.embed.ly/static/data/2.html')
page_text  = BeautifulSoup(r.text).article

#load up our queue initially                                                                                                         
tag_queue = deque(page_text.findAll(recursive=False))
current_ps = len(page_text.findAll('p', recursive=False))
level = 1
values = []


#Perform a BFS and track the level of p tags as we find them.                                                                        
while tag_queue and current_ps:
    next_ps = 0
    while current_ps != 0:
	elem = tag_queue.popleft()
	next_ps += len(elem.findAll('p', recursive=False))
	for next_elem in elem.findAll(recursive=False):
            tag_queue.append(next_elem)
	if elem.name == 'p':
            current_ps -= 1
            values.append(level)
    level += 1
    current_ps = next_ps

mean = float(sum(values)) / len(values)
adjusted_vals = map(lambda num: (num-mean)**2, values)
print "%.1f" %  math.sqrt(float(sum(adjusted_vals)/len(adjusted_vals)))

problem3.py

zipfs_vals = [float(2520)/i for i in xrange(1,901)]
words_needed =  sum(zipfs_vals)/2
uniques = enumerate(zipfs_vals)

while words_needed > 0:
    unique,count = uniques.next()
    words_needed = words_needed - count

#we need to add 1 since enumerate starts from 0 and we start unique words from 1                                                     
print unique+1