BUG: Latex fails to render in Jupyter Notebook (in VS Code)

[jrmagers]

Pandas version checks

• I have checked that this issue has not already been reported.

• I have confirmed this bug exists on the latest version of pandas.

• I have confirmed this bug exists on the main branch of pandas.

Reproducible Example

import pandas as pd
import numpy as np

df = pd.DataFrame(np.random.randn(3, 3), columns=list("ABC"))
df.style.format('$\\beta=$ {:.2%}').set_caption('This is the result with $\\alpha=5$')

Issue Description

When the code above is executed in a Jupyter notebook inside of VS code, the latex is not rendered:

Expected Behavior

The expected behavior is the following:

Notably, this output was produced by using VS Code Export to HTML (which works as expected).

Installed Versions

INSTALLED VERSIONS

commit : 2e218d1
python : 3.10.3.final.0
python-bits : 64
OS : Windows
OS-release : 10
Version : 10.0.19044
machine : AMD64
processor : Intel64 Family 6 Model 142 Stepping 12, GenuineIntel
byteorder : little
LC_ALL : None
LANG : None
LOCALE : English_United States.1252

pandas : 1.5.3
numpy : 1.22.3
pytz : 2022.1
dateutil : 2.8.2
setuptools : 58.1.0
pip : 23.0.1
Cython : None
pytest : None
hypothesis : None
sphinx : None
blosc : None
feather : None
xlsxwriter : 3.0.3
lxml.etree : 4.9.1
html5lib : None
pymysql : None
psycopg2 : None
jinja2 : 3.1.2
IPython : 8.5.0
pandas_datareader: None
bs4 : 4.11.1
bottleneck : None
brotli : None
fastparquet : None
fsspec : 2022.8.2
gcsfs : None
matplotlib : 3.6.1
numba : 0.56.2
numexpr : None
odfpy : None
openpyxl : 3.0.10
pandas_gbq : None
pyarrow : None
pyreadstat : None
pyxlsb : None
s3fs : None
scipy : 1.9.1
snappy : None
sqlalchemy : None
tables : None
tabulate : None
xarray : 2022.12.0
xlrd : None
xlwt : 1.3.0
zstandard : None
tzdata : None

[jrmagers]

Also reported here: https://github.com/executablebooks/jupyter-book)](https://github.com/executablebooks/jupyter-book/issues/1826

[rhshadrach]

From the link above, pandas behaves correctly in jupyter-lab. Is there any reason to suspect this is an issue with pandas?

[jrmagers]

From the link above, pandas behaves correctly in jupyter-lab. Is there any reason to suspect this is an issue with pandas?

The only (possible) reason I believe is that it used to work in the past (with an older version of pandas). That's my own observation that I should probably look into.

[rhshadrach]

with an older version of pandas

What version?

[attack68]

Agree with @rhshadrach. If this renders in one system it is not pandas issue.

Have you tried using another math mode identifier. Perhaps VSCode has changed/updated?
Is it an option that is configurable in VSCode. Do you need a mathjax addin installed to VSCode?

df = pd.DataFrame(np.random.randn(1, 1), columns=list("A"))
print(df.style.format('\( \\beta= \) {:.2%}').set_caption('This is the result with $\\alpha=5$').to_latex())

\begin{table}
\caption{This is the result with $\alpha=5$}
\begin{tabular}{lr}
 & A \\
0 & \( \beta= \) -156.96% \\
\end{tabular}
\end{table}

This pandas output is correct.

print(df.style.format('$\\beta=$ {:.2%}').set_caption('This is the result with $\\alpha=5$').to_html())

<style type="text/css">
</style>
<table id="T_94ee7">
  <caption>This is the result with $\alpha=5$</caption>
  <thead>
    <tr>
      <th class="blank level0" >&nbsp;</th>
      <th id="T_94ee7_level0_col0" class="col_heading level0 col0" >A</th>
    </tr>
  </thead>
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <th id="T_94ee7_level0_row0" class="row_heading level0 row0" >0</th>
      <td id="T_94ee7_row0_col0" class="data row0 col0" >\( \beta= \) -156.96%</td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>

Are you aware that some browsers / renderers detect pandas dataframes from the HTML CSS class that pandas has attached? Google Colab used to need class="dataframe" but I believe that is now fixed and remove.

You can try:

df.style
    .format('$\\beta=$ {:.2%}')
    .set_caption('This is the result with $\\alpha=5$')
    .set_table_attributes('class="dataframe"')

This has fixed other problems: see here

[rhshadrach]

@jrmagers - friendly ping, it would be helpful to know if @attack68's suggestion above fixes the issue for you.

[jrmagers]

I tried .set_table_attributes('class="dataframe"') and I also tried to_html() and neither worked. To be clear: I think the output looks correct, but VS code is not rendering it. Perhaps this is a VSCode rendering issue?

sidenote: I received a VSCode notification today asking me to take a survey about what I liked and disliked about the Jupyter Notebook experience in VSCode. I took this opportunity to cite this bug report. :)

[attack68]

closing this as pandas unrelated. Feel free to reopen if more info comes to light.