diff --git a/tools/github_stats.py b/tools/github_stats.py
old mode 100644
new mode 100755
index 9854c95..dd4a54b
--- a/tools/github_stats.py
+++ b/tools/github_stats.py
@@ -1,17 +1,40 @@
+#!/usr/bin/env python
+"""Simple tools to query github.com and gather stats about issues.
+"""
+from __future__ import print_function
+
 import json
-from datetime import datetime, timedelta
 import sys
+
+from datetime import datetime, timedelta
 from urllib import urlopen
 
+
 def get_issues(project="ipython/ipython/", state="open"):
     """Get a list of the issues from the Github API."""
-    f = urlopen("http://github.com/api/v2/json/issues/list/%s%s" % (project, state))
+    f = urlopen("http://github.com/api/v2/json/issues/list/%s%s" % (project,
+                                                                    state))
     return json.load(f)['issues']
 
+
 def _parse_datetime(s):
     """Parse dates in the format returned by the Github API."""
     return datetime.strptime(s.rpartition(" ")[0], "%Y/%m/%d %H:%M:%S")
 
+
+def issues2dict(issues):
+    """Convert a list of issues to a dict, keyed by issue number."""
+    idict = {}
+    for i in issues:
+        idict[i['number']] = i
+    return idict
+
+
+def is_pull_request(issue):
+    """Return True if the given issue is a pull request."""
+    return 'pull_request_url' in issue
+
+
 def issues_closed_since(period=timedelta(days=365), project="ipython/ipython/"):
     """Get all issues closed since a particular point in time. period
 can either be a datetime object, or a timedelta object. In the
@@ -21,11 +44,47 @@ latter case, it is used as a time before the present."""
         period = datetime.now() - period
     return [i for i in allclosed if _parse_datetime(i['closed_at']) > period]
 
+
+def sorted_by_field(issues, field='closed_at', reverse=False):
+    """Return a list of issues sorted by closing date date."""
+    return sorted(issues, key = lambda i:i[field], reverse=reverse)
+
+
+def report(issues, show_urls=False):
+    """Summary report about a list of issues, printing number and title.
+    """
+    # titles may have unicode in them, so we must encode everything below
+    if show_urls:
+        for i in issues:
+            print('* `%d <%s>`_: %s' % (i['number'],
+                                        i['html_url'].encode('utf-8'),
+                                        i['title'].encode('utf-8')))
+    else:
+        for i in issues:
+            print('* %d: %s' % (i['number'], i['title'].encode('utf-8')))
+
+
 if __name__ == "__main__":
-    # Demo
+    # Demo, search one year back
+    show_urls = True
     if len(sys.argv) > 1:
         days = int(sys.argv[1])
     else:
         days = 365
-    n = len(issues_closed_since(timedelta(days=days)))
-    print "%d issues closed in the last %d days." % (n, days)
+
+    if 1:
+        issues = sorted_by_field(issues_closed_since(timedelta(days=days)),
+                                 reverse=True)
+
+    pulls = filter(is_pull_request, issues)
+    regular = filter(lambda i: not is_pull_request(i), issues)
+    n = len(issues)
+
+    print("%d total issues closed in the last %d days." % (n, days))
+    print("%d pull requests and %d regular issues." % (len(pulls), len(regular)))
+    print()
+    print('Pull requests (%d):\n' % len(pulls))
+    report(pulls, show_urls)
+    print()
+    print('Regular issues (%d):\n' % len(regular))
+    report(regular, show_urls)