Jupyter Notebooks are a great way for working with Python interactively. The integration of Python code into documents is very useful for reports or for writing executable documentation of algorithms and functions. The text can be structured and exported in various formats. With the ever increasing popularity of Python based on the data science hype, more and more libraries are available. Although Python3 is considered to be the future of Python, consensus on the question Python 2.7 vs Python 3.5 is not yet reached. There are quite a few differences and Python 3 is not backwards compatible and therefore the code cannot be executed with both versions without modification. When you install Jupyter Notebooks via Anaconda, Python3 is recommended but Python 2.7 packages also exist.
As there is a large number of libraries, which have not yet been ported to Python 3, it can be useful to switch between the language version within a Jupyter Notebook. The following example assumes that you have both Python versions already installed.
Installing a new Kernel
In Jupyter Notebooks, the kernel is responsible for executing Python code. When you install the Anaconda System for Python3, this version also becomes the default for the notebooks. In order to enable Python 2.7 in your notebooks, you need to install a new kernel like this:
sudo python2 -m pip install --upgrade ipykernel
sudo python2 -m ipykernel install
Restart Jupyter to activate the new Python 2.7 kernel.