Computational Notebook

A computational notebook is a document that mixes runnable code, its output (tables, charts, numbers), and written explanation in one place, split into cells you run one at a time. Jupyter (for Python) and R Markdown are the best-known examples; they are the natural home for exploratory analysis where you poke at data and immediately see results.

Notebooks are loved for teaching, exploration, and sharing a narrative analysis, because the story and the evidence sit side by side. But they have a famous trap: cells can be run out of order, so a notebook may show results that no longer match the code, hurting reproducibility. Good practice is to “restart and run all” before trusting it, and to move stable, repeated logic out into proper scripts or pipelines.