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by dandermotj 3723 days ago
Just a heads up: Jupyter Notebook is not an open source alternative to Mathematica. Originally, Jupyter was iPython notebook, an IDE of sorts for data science and analysis in Python, by writing code and markdown together in a more coherent and integrated way. Then they incorporated a host of other popular open source languages for computational science such as R, Julia, F#, ect., so that we could use the best tools for their task, all in one document.
3 comments

Great summary of Jupyter Notebook!

I'll add that it's a great way to teach python to students. Notebooks can be shared and students basically retain all their legwork as they learn. It's very helpful for visually seeing code work if you are new.

Well, not actually a IDE, I still use Emacs to create my IPython Notebooks in Jupyter.

Although it has and allow the creation of extensions which provide a lot of usefull features. In this version, the nbextensions are introduced as python packages, so that they're even easier to use/install.

The best thing with Jupyter Notebooks, is that one can write text with markdown, show formulas with LaTex (using MathJax), show code inputs and outputs in REPL-style, all together with possible Bash use, other languages' snippets, and nice cell %magics.

>all in one document.

So it is possible to run both R and Python commands in the same notebook?

Yeah, there are bridges for converting Python data types to R and vice versa (Rpy2).
Feather is a recently released data frame file that both R and Python can interface with. We have Hadley Whickam and Wes McKinney to thank for it!
Feels like it should be called circumference, since multiplication is commutative :P (2pyr)
No, R and Python are separate kernels (think compiler). You can mix Shell and Python or Shell and R though.