IPython notebook won't show plot

Question

Not sure why this simple plot won't show. simply shows an In[*] and won't finish loading the plot. Can't find any info on what the * means. Any help?

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt


r = np.arange(1,11)
v2 = 1.0/r

font = {'family' : 'serif',
    'color'  : 'black',
    'weight' : 'normal',
    'size'   : 18,
    }
plt.xlabel('$V*$', fontdict = font)
plt.ylabel('$Radii$', fontdict = font)
plt.plot(r,v2,lw=2)
plt.show()

Answer 1

Setting the iPython notebook %matplotlib magic command here is what you need to display the plot.

Basically, that command tells the notebook which backend to use when plotting with matplotlib , and sets it to work interactively. You usually will want to set that at the top of your notebook.

There are several options. A common one is

%matplotlib inline

which displays the plots right there in the iPython notebook.

Other options will depend on your system, but can include:

‘gtk’, ‘gtk3’, ‘inline’, ‘nbagg’, ‘notebook’, ‘osx’, ‘qt’, ‘qt4’, ‘qt5’, ‘tk’, ‘wx’

If you just set:

%matplotlib

without a gui option, it will use the default backend on your system (defined in your .matplotlibrc file).