Why Jupyter notebook?

Jupyter notebook (formerly known as IPython notebook) is an IPython-based interactive computational environment. Unlike the native Python console, code and imported data can easily be reused. There are also markdown functions that allow you to take notes like a real notebook. Code and other content can be separated into blocks (cells) for better organization. In particular, it offers a seamless integration with the matplotlib library for plot display.

Jupyter Notebook works as a server-client application and provides a neat web browser interface where you can edit and run your code. While you can run it locally even on a computer without internet access, notebooks on remote servers can be as easily accessed by SSH port forwarding. Multiple notebook instances, local or remote, can be run simultaneously on different network ports.

Here is a screenshot of a running Jupyter Notebook:

Jupyter notebook provides multiple saving options for easy sharing. There are also features such as auto-complete functions in the code editor that facilitate development.

In addition, Jupyter notebook offers different kernels to be installed for interactive computing with different programming languages. We will skip this for our purposes.