ts.plot() and dataFrame.plot() throwing error: " NameError: name '_converter' is not defined"

Question

When running plot() method of a dataframe or series, python is throwing an error. Last line of the error is NameError: name '_converter' is not defined

I am using Python 3.6 and all other functionalities are working as expected so unsure what might be causing this.

Below is a code sample that causes the issue, and below that is the error that results.

import pandas as pd
import numpy as np
import matplotlib
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

ts = pd.Series(np.random.randn(1000), index=pd.date_range('1/1/2000', periods=1000))
ts = ts.cumsum()
ts.plot()

The error being returned is shown below:

NameError                                 Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-336-8fe4bd433d4d> in <module>()
----> 1 ts.plot()
      2 
      3 plt.plot(ts)

c:\users\fguih\appdata\local\programs\python\python36\lib\site-packages\pandas\plotting\_core.py in __call__(self, kind, ax, figsize, use_index, title, grid, legend, style, logx, logy, loglog, xticks, yticks, xlim, ylim, rot, fontsize, colormap, table, yerr, xerr, label, secondary_y, **kwds)
   2501                            colormap=colormap, table=table, yerr=yerr,
   2502                            xerr=xerr, label=label, secondary_y=secondary_y,
-> 2503                            **kwds)
   2504     __call__.__doc__ = plot_series.__doc__
   2505 

c:\users\fguih\appdata\local\programs\python\python36\lib\site-packages\pandas\plotting\_core.py in plot_series(data, kind, ax, figsize, use_index, title, grid, legend, style, logx, logy, loglog, xticks, yticks, xlim, ylim, rot, fontsize, colormap, table, yerr, xerr, label, secondary_y, **kwds)
   1925                  yerr=yerr, xerr=xerr,
   1926                  label=label, secondary_y=secondary_y,
-> 1927                  **kwds)
   1928 
   1929 

c:\users\fguih\appdata\local\programs\python\python36\lib\site-packages\pandas\plotting\_core.py in _plot(data, x, y, subplots, ax, kind, **kwds)
   1725                             pass
   1726                 data = series
-> 1727         plot_obj = klass(data, subplots=subplots, ax=ax, kind=kind, **kwds)
   1728 
   1729     plot_obj.generate()

c:\users\fguih\appdata\local\programs\python\python36\lib\site-packages\pandas\plotting\_core.py in __init__(self, data, **kwargs)
    929 
    930     def __init__(self, data, **kwargs):
--> 931         MPLPlot.__init__(self, data, **kwargs)
    932         if self.stacked:
    933             self.data = self.data.fillna(value=0)

c:\users\fguih\appdata\local\programs\python\python36\lib\site-packages\pandas\plotting\_core.py in __init__(self, data, kind, by, subplots, sharex, sharey, use_index, figsize, grid, legend, rot, ax, fig, title, xlim, ylim, xticks, yticks, sort_columns, fontsize, secondary_y, colormap, table, layout, **kwds)
     98                  table=False, layout=None, **kwds):
     99 
--> 100         _converter._WARN = False
    101         self.data = data
    102         self.by = by

NameError: name '_converter' is not defined

Answer 1

Based on the comment of nbkhope:

Restart you python interpreter

In my case, stopping and starting again jupyter notebook

(I took way too long to debug this issue so I'm posting this as an answer)