python - %matplotlib notebook showing a blank histogram

Question

In my Jupyter notebook I am now using %matplotlib notebook instead of %matplotlib inline, it's awesome that I can now interact with my plots on Jupyter. However, when I try to make an histogram I get a blank plot:

If I use %matplotlib inline everything works fine:

What's going on?

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/41125690/matplotlib-notebook-showing-a-blank-histogram

Answer 1

Seeing that my comment above has indeed helped someone to solve the problem I will post it as an answer.

The problem occurs if you switch from %matplotlib inline to %matplotlib notebook without restarting the kernel.

Switching from %matplotlib notebook to %matplotlib inline works fine.

So the solution is to either restart the kernel or start a new notebook.

It seems that in some cases it helps to repeat the setting of the notebook backend, i.e. call it twice like

%matplotlib notebook
%matplotlib notebook

An analysis for why that is can be found in this comment