It seems that the problem in Jupyter notebook as in different ide is the design feature. Therefore, we have to write the function (prime_factor) into a different file and import the module. Furthermore, we have to take care of the adjustments. For example, in my case, I have coded the function into a file known as defs.py
def prime_factor(value):
factors = []
for divisor in range(2, value-1):
quotient, remainder = divmod(value, divisor)
if not remainder:
factors.extend(prime_factor(divisor))
factors.extend(prime_factor(quotient))
break
else:
factors = [value]
return factors
Then in the jupyter notebook I wrote the following lines
import multiprocessing
import random
from multiprocessing import Pool
import defs
if __name__ == '__main__':
pool = Pool()
to_factor = [ random.randint(100000, 50000000) for i in range(20)]
results = pool.map(defs.prime_factor, to_factor)
for value, factors in zip(to_factor, results):
print("The factors of {} are {}".format(value, factors))
This solved my problem