Markdown in iPython Notebook: how to highlight code?

You're making <\code> sections. They're not styled the same way as SO. Add this cell to a notebook and they will have a similar style.

%%HTML
<style> code {background-color : lightgrey !important;} </style>

If you want more specificity then use .rendered_html code{... in a custom style sheet.

Late answer but backtick ` is the way to go, just like here at SO.

In short: Use <code> tag

In normal cases backticks work for highlighting text but are printed as literal characters when inside html lists.

A part of tensorflow tutorial written using markdown

Training the neural network model requires the following steps:

<ol>
    <li>Feed the training data into the model. In this example, the training data is in the <code>train_images</code> and <code>train_labels</code> arrays.</li>
    <li>The model learns to associate the images and labels.</li>
    <li>You ask the model to make predictions about a test set -- in this example the test_images array.</li>
    <li>Verify the predictions match the labels from the <code>test_labels</code> array.</li>
</ol>

Output

(As seen in jupyter notebook)

Training the neural network model requires the following steps:

1. Feed the training data into the model. In this example, the training data is in the train_images and train_labels arrays.
2. The model learns to associate the images and labels.
3. You ask the model to make predictions about a test set -- in this example the test_images array.
4. Verify the predictions match the labels from the test_labels array.