How to dynamically update a plot in a loop in IPython notebook (within one cell)

Solution 1:

Use the IPython.display module:

%matplotlib inline
import time
import pylab as pl
from IPython import display
for i in range(10):
    pl.plot(pl.randn(100))
    display.clear_output(wait=True)
    display.display(pl.gcf())
    time.sleep(1.0)

Solution 2:

A couple of improvement's on HYRY's answer:

• call display before clear_output so that you end up with one plot, rather than two, when the cell is interrupted.
• catch the KeyboardInterrupt, so that the cell output isn't littered with the traceback.

import matplotlib.pylab as plt
import pandas as pd
import numpy as np
import time
from IPython import display
%matplotlib inline

i = pd.date_range('2013-1-1',periods=100,freq='s')

while True:
    try:
        plt.plot(pd.Series(data=np.random.randn(100), index=i))
        display.display(plt.gcf())
        display.clear_output(wait=True)
        time.sleep(1)
    except KeyboardInterrupt:
        break