### Overview

Teaching: 10 min
Exercises: 15 min
Questions
• Are there any other features besides code, text and output?
Objectives
• Learn how to access help.
• Learn how to use magics and shell commands.
• Learn how to use widgets.

## Extra features

We can get help on an object using a question mark:

import numpy as np
np.sum?


Or two question marks to also see the source code:

np.sum??


List all names in a module matching pattern:

?np.*sum*

np.cumsum
np.einsum
np.einsum_path
np.nancumsum
np.nansum
np.sum


%quickref shows a quick reference card of features and shortcuts:

%quickref


### Shell commands

• You can run shell commands by prepending with !
• On Windows, GitBash needs to have the following option enabled:
Use Git and the optional Unix tools from the Windows Command Prompt
• Make sure your cell command doesn’t require interaction
!echo "hello"

hello


We can also capture the output of a shell command:

notebooks = !ls *.ipynb

• Common linux shell commands are also available as magics: %ls, %pwd, %mkdir, %cp, %mv, %cd, etc..

### Magics

Magics are a simple command language which significantly extend the power of Jupyter.

There are two kinds of magics:

• Line magics: commands prepended by one % character and whose arguments only extend to the end of the current line.
• Cell magics: use two percent characters as a marker (%%), receive as argument the whole cell (must be used as the first line in a cell)

%lsmagic lists all available line and cell magics:

%lsmagic


Question mark shows help:

%sx?


Additional magics can also be installed or created.

### Widgets

Widgets add more interactivity to Notebooks, allowing one to visualize and control changes in data, parameters etc.

from ipywidgets import interact


#### Use interact as a function

def f(x, y, s):
return (x, y, s)

interact(f, x=True, y=1.0, s="Hello");


#### Use interact as a decorator

@interact(x=True, y=1.0, s="Hello")
def g(x, y, s):
return (x, y, s)


## A few useful magic commands

Using the computing-$\pi$ notebook, practice using a few magic commands. Remember that cell magics need to be on the first line of the cell.

1. In the cell with the for-loop over N (throwing darts), add the %%timeit cell magic and run the cell.
2. In the same cell, try instead the %%prun cell profiling magic.
3. Try introducing a bug in the code (e.g., use an incorrect variable name: points.append((x,y2, True)))
• run the cell
• after the exception occurs, run the %debug magic in a new cell to enter an interactive debugger
• type h for a help menu, and help <keyword> for help on keyword
• type p x to print the value of x
• exit the debugger by typing q
4. Have a look at the output of %lsmagic, and use a question mark and double question mark to see help for a magic command that raises your interest.

## Playing around with a widget

Widgets can be used to interactively explore or analyze data. Using the computing-$\pi$ notebook, introduce a widget which plots subsets of all the random points:

1. Change the last two lines of the plotting cell into a function taking a tuple as argument, and slice the points list:
def plot_points(n=(1,10)):
x, y, colors = zip(*points[::n])
pyplot.scatter(x, y, c=colors)

2. Add the @interact decorator above the function, and execute the cell.
3. Drag the slider back and forth and observe the results.
4. Can you think of other interesting uses of widgets in the computing-$\pi$ notebook?

### Key points

• Jupyter notebooks have a number of extra features that can come in handy.