(A)Rise (A)wake and Stop not … Till we convert our Jupiter notebook into a Slide — RISE Plugin
Introduction:
I have been obsessed with Jupyter notebooks for a while. A cool notebook not only has excellent code but a better Visualization story to tell.
The art of fluid — Storytelling
Ever since data became the new normal of gold-digging, it became imperative to merge data into stories so that we can tell it to all kinds of audiences. In doing so, we have to make this data to be a living working entity rather than a stale one.
Jupyter notebooks and fluidity
Notebooks are made of three essential building blocks to convey analysis through calculations.Code + Markdown + Heading (We seldom use)
Code — We use this Cell type to perform complex calcuations, load data frames, flame up the Python/R engine to power up your story — Bottomline, What you enter gets executed here.
Markdown — We use this Cell type to express a short summary of our code.
RISE and the New Dimension of Jupyter Notebook
Often when our notebooks become a linear stream of data computations and chart expressions, it becomes difficult for people to follow our story. We have felt that a slideshow way of expressing Notebooks would always be beneficial. At this point, we get into a new dimension of our Jupyter notebooks called “RISE.”
Welcome to the world of RISE — Reveal.js — Jupyter/IPython Slideshow Extension
RISE is an amazing Jupyter Notebook extension released and maintained by Damianavila here
Enable it! — All we have to do is to do a clean install of RISE plugin using one of two ways namely, a) Conda Install — Clean way b) PIP install less preferred (Please refer to the installation here)
Once installed, our beautiful Slideshow enabler shows up in our Jupyter notebooks under View -> Cell Toolbar -> Slideshow. Along with it, we have a cool RISE plugin like graph icon that pops up in our toolbar.
Convert it — Given we have our RISE plugin enabled, we can convert each cell into a slide. A slide itself has multiple dimensions to it. If our Visualization or chart needs to be an independent Slide, select Slide Type as “Slide.” If our little message needs to be a supportive text to our slide, choose Slide Type as Fragment. If you want to totally “hide” a cell from being shown, select the type as “Skip.” There is another means to stack slides called “Sub slides.”
Launch it!. Given we have successfully converted our notebook as a “Slide show” its time to show it off. We can fire our Notebook slideshow using a little Icon like “Bar Graph” that shows up on our Notebook toolbar. Clicking this RISE slideshow button launches our live notebook as a Slide show. The power of dynamic data cells combined with “Slides” is an unstoppable way of conveying our ideas to all audiences.
Conclusion
Given we have seen how powerful this RISE plugin is, we have more creative ways to auto-launch our presentation. If you want to explore more, please visit the RISE website and explore a few compelling examples. Finally, I will be back with my next article on Combining RISE with Jupyter Notebooks and Altair charts with a fantastic way of launching it through MyBinder.org. Stay tuned.
