- Python max() and min() – finding max and min in list or array
- 1.1. Find largest integer in array
- 1.2. Find largest string in array
- 1.3. Find max key or value
- 2.1. Find lowest integer in array
- 2.2. Find smallest string in array
- 2.3. Find min key or value
- Find Max And Min In A List Python
- Find Maximum Value In List
- 1. Using max() function
- 2. Finding the maximum value using for loop
- 3. Using sort() function: find max
- Find Minimum Value In List
- 1. Using min() function
- 2. Finding the minimum value using for loop
- 3. Using sort() function : find min
- Conclusions
- Python – Find Min Value and its index in List
- How to get the minimum value in a list in Python?
- Loop through the list to find the minimum
- Using min() to get the maximum value
- Author
Python max() and min() – finding max and min in list or array
Python examples to find the largest (or the smallest) item in a collection (e.g. list, set or array) of comparable elements using max() and min() methods.
- Compute the maximum of the values passed in its argument.
- Lexicographically largest value if strings are passed as arguments.
1.1. Find largest integer in array
>>> nums = [1, 8, 2, 23, 7, -4, 18, 23, 42, 37, 2] >>> max( nums ) 42 #Max value in array
1.2. Find largest string in array
>>> blogName = ["how","to","do","in","java"] >>> max( blogName ) 'to' #Largest value in array
1.3. Find max key or value
A little complex structure.
>>> prices = < 'how': 45.23, 'to': 612.78, 'do': 205.55, 'in': 37.20, 'java': 10.75 >>>> max( prices.values() ) 612.78 >>> max( prices.keys() ) #or max( prices ). Default is keys(). 'to'
- compute the minimum of the values passed in its argument.
- lexicographically smallest value if strings are passed as arguments.
2.1. Find lowest integer in array
>>> nums = [1, 8, 2, 23, 7, -4, 18, 23, 42, 37, 2] >>> min( nums ) -4 #Min value in array
2.2. Find smallest string in array
>>> blogName = ["how","to","do","in","java"] >>> min( blogName ) 'do' #Smallest value in array
2.3. Find min key or value
A little complex structure.
>>> prices = < 'how': 45.23, 'to': 612.78, 'do': 205.55, 'in': 37.20, 'java': 10.75 >>>> min( prices.values() ) 10.75 >>> min( prices.keys() ) #or min( prices ). Default is keys(). 'do'
Find Max And Min In A List Python
Working with lists is very common in Python and even more common is to find max and min in a list Python. We will see 3 different methods for each to find min and max in a python list.
A list in python is a collection of user-stored data in order. In a list, data can be of any type like string, integer, float, boolean, etc.
A list can be created by using square brackets [ ] . Example [1, «a», True]
A list can have mixed data or can have only one data type. To find max and min in a list, we will work on a list of numbers. A list that has only integers or float values both negative and positive can be used to find max and min.
Find Maximum Value In List
To find maximum value in a list we will use 3 different methods.
- Using max() function
- Finding the maximum value using for loop
- Using sort() function
1. Using max() function
The max() function is built-in function in Python. It returns the maximum value in a list. It takes a list as an argument and returns the maximum value in the list.
The function accepts the list as an argument. Here is the syntax:
Let’s see an example to find the maximum value in a list.
num = [4, 6, 1, 3, 9, 2] # Find the maximum value in the list print(max(num))
The max() function can also be used to find the maximum value in a list of strings.
To compare the values among strings, the max() function uses their ASCII values. For example, the ASCII value of a is 97 and the ASCII value of z is 122.
str = ["a", "b", "c", "d", "e"] print(max(str))
In the above example, max of the list is e because the ASCII value of e is 101 which is the highest in the list.
Note : max() function does not work on lists of mixed data types.
2. Finding the maximum value using for loop
You can create your own Python function to find the maximum value in a list using for loop and if condition.
Algorithm to find the maximum value in a list
- Create a variable max and assign it to the first element of the list
- Create a for loop to iterate over the list
- Check if the current element is greater than max , if yes then assign it to max . Now current element will become the new max .
- Keep iterating over the list until the end of the list and return max .
The example below is implemented using the above algorithm.
def max_value(list): # set first element as max max = list[0] for i in list: # check if the current element is greater than max if i > max: max = i return max num = [12, 65, 54, 39, 102, 37, 72, 33, 5, -28, 0, 15] print(max_value(num))
The above example will find the maximum value in the list and print it.
3. Using sort() function: find max
The sort() function is another built-in function in python using which we can find the maximum value in a list. The sort() function sorts the list in ascending order, which means smallest stays at the first position and largest stays at the last position.
The sort() function takes a list as an argument. TO get the maximum value in a list, you can sort the list and picks the last element of the list.
num = [12, 65, 54, 39, 102, 37, 72, 33, 5, -28, 0, 15] # sort the list num.sort() max = num[-1] print(max)
The above example sorts the list and then picks the last element from the sorted list which is the maximum value in the list.
Find Minimum Value In List
Again to find the minimum from a list we can use similar 3 methods but this time just to find the minimum value.
- Using min() function
- Finding the minimum value using for loop
- Using sort() function
1. Using min() function
The min() function in python finds the minimum value from a list and returns it. It can work with both numbers and strings as well but not with mixed data types.
In the following example, the min() function finds the minimum value in a list of numbers and prints the output.
num = [4, 6.4, 1, -3, 0, 2.5] # Find the minimum value in the list print(min(num))
The min() function can also find the minimum value in a list of strings by comparing their ASCII values.
2. Finding the minimum value using for loop
Creating own function to find minimum value in a list by comparing one value to each other.
Algorithm to find the minimum value in a list
- Store the first element of the list in a variable min
- Now loop through the list element and compare elements from each other. If the current element is less than min , then assign it to min . Now you have the new min value.
- Keep repeating the above steps until the end of the list. At the last min variable will have the actual minimum value of the string.
- Return min .
Here is the implementation of the above algorithm.
def min_value(list): # set first element as min min = list[0] for i in list: # check if the current element is less than min if i < min: min = i return min num = [12, 65, 54, 39, 102, 37, 72, 33, 5, -28, 0, 15] print(min_value(num))
The function will find the minimum value in the list and returns it as output.
3. Using sort() function : find min
We can again use the sort() function here to sort the elements of a list in ascending order and then picks the first element of the list which is the minimum value.
num = [12, 65, 54, 39, 102, 37, 72, 33, 5, -28, 0, 15] min = num[0] print(min)
The sort() method sorted the element in ascending order which puts the smallest value in the list at the first position which is -28.
Conclusions
In this short guide, we have covered 3 methods for each to find max and min in a list python. We have also covered the min(), max() and sort() as in-built functions in python and also created a custom function to find minimum and maximum.
Python – Find Min Value and its index in List
In this tutorial, we will look at how to find the min value in a Python list and its corresponding index with the help of some examples.
How to get the minimum value in a list in Python?
A simple approach is to iterate through the list and keep track of the minimum value. Alternatively, you can also use the Python built-in min() function to find the minimum value in a list.
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Let’s look at some of the different ways of finding the smallest value and its index in a list.
Loop through the list to find the minimum
Iterate through the list values and keep track of the min value. Here’s an example.
# create a list ls = [3, 6, 7, 2, 1, 5] # find min value using loop min_val = ls[0] for val in ls: if val < min_val: min_val = val # display the min value print(min_val)
Here, we iterate over each value in the list ls and keep track of the minimum value encountered in the variable min_val . After the loop finishes, the variable min_val stores the minimum value present in the list, 1.
You can use this method to get the index corresponding to the minimum value in the list as well. Use an additional variable to keep track of the current minimum value’s index.
# create a list ls = [3, 6, 7, 2, 1, 5] # find min value using loop min_val = ls[0] min_val_idx = 0 for i in range(len(ls)): if ls[i] < min_val: min_val = ls[i] min_val_idx = i # display the min value print(min_val) # display its index print(min_val_idx)
We get the minimum value and its index after the loop finishes. Here we iterate through the list via its index rather than the values. You can also use the enumerate() function to iterate through the index and value together.
Using min() to get the maximum value
You can also use the Python built-in min() function to get the min value in a list. The function returns the minimum value in the passed iterable (for example, list, tuple, etc.).
# create a list ls = [3, 6, 7, 2, 1, 5] # find min value min(ls)
Using the min() function is simple and is just a single line code compared to the previous example.
You can use the list index() function to find the index corresponding to the minimum value (assuming you already know the minimum value).
# create a list ls = [3, 6, 7, 2, 1, 5] # find min value min_val = min(ls) # display the min value print(min_val) # display its index print(ls.index(min_val))
We get the min value and its index in the list ls .
Note that the list index() function returns the index of the first occurrence of the passed value. If the min value occurs more than once in the list, you’ll only get the index of its first occurrence. You can use list comprehension to get all the indices of occurrence of the min value in the list.
# create a list ls = [3, 6, 1, 2, 1, 5] # find min value min_val = min(ls) print(min_val) # find all indices corresponding to min val min_val_idx = [i for i in range(len(ls)) if ls[i]==min_val] print(min_val_idx)
We get all the indices where the minimum value occurs in the list ls .
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Author
Piyush is a data professional passionate about using data to understand things better and make informed decisions. He has experience working as a Data Scientist in the consulting domain and holds an engineering degree from IIT Roorkee. His hobbies include watching cricket, reading, and working on side projects. View all posts
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