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by TuringTest 1649 days ago
The point of interactive notebooks is not seeing and having access to all the data - it's seeing the abstractions at work, having a direct grasp of how they act on particular examples as an aid to understand their formal definition.

Nothing prevents you from having two-column notebooks, if you find that advantageous, as well as abstract and conclusions sections. The part that you don't get with static paper is that of navigating the abstraction ladder[1] up and down with direct manipulation aids, instead of having to work it all in your head or by following dense detailed paragraphs.

[1] As also explained by Bret Victor in http://worrydream.com/LadderOfAbstraction/