[FIXED] Import of package works in IPython shell but not in Jupyter notebook

Issue

I think this question is probably closely related to another one I had, but I'm not sure what the best general-purpose answer is.

On my laptop, if I log into the IPython shell, I can execute

In [1]: import matplotlib

without error.

But if I try to do the same thing in a Jupyter notebook, I get the following error:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
ModuleNotFoundError                       Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-2-82be63b7783c> in <module>()
----> 1 import matplotlib

ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'matplotlib'

What explains this? What should I do to fix this? Why does the IPython shell have access to a package that Jupyter notebook doesn't have access to?

Solution

The problem seems to be that my version of jupyter notebook uses python 3 by default, whereas my version of the ipython shell uses python 2.

I followed these instructions to install a python 2 kernel for use in jupyter notebook.

Then I switched my notebook to use the python 2 kernel by selecting Kernel > Change kernel inside the notebook.

This allowed me to import all the packages I was able to import in the shell.

Answered By - dbliss