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How to get max and min of a list in Python

Quick answer

Use built-in max() and min() functions to get the maximum and minimum values from a list.

numbers = [12, 45, 7, 23, 56, 89, 34]
max_value = max(numbers)
min_value = min(numbers)
print(f'Max: {max_value}, Min: {min_value}')

The snippet uses built-in max() and min() functions to find the maximum and minimum values in a list. This approach is efficient and straightforward. Note that these functions will throw a ValueError if the list is empty.

Variations

Using numpy

import numpy as np
numbers = [12, 45, 7, 23, 56, 89, 34]
max_value = np.max(numbers)
min_value = np.min(numbers)

requires pip install numpy

Handling empty lists

numbers = []
try:
    max_value = max(numbers)
    min_value = min(numbers)
except ValueError:
    print('List is empty')

safer variant

Finding max and min in a list of tuples

numbers = [(1, 2), (3, 4), (5, 6)]
max_value = max(numbers, key=lambda x: x[0])
min_value = min(numbers, key=lambda x: x[0])

related pattern

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