Max & Min in Python (5 Examples)

This tutorial shows how to find the maximum and minimum in a list and the columns of a pandas DataFrame in Python.

Table of contents:

Let’s start right away.

Example 1: Maximum & Minimum of List Object

The following syntax illustrates how to calculate the maximum and minimum of a list object.

For this example, we first have to create an example list:

my_list = [1, 4, 2, 9, 7, 2, 1, 8, 3, 3, 2, 1]             # Create example list
print(my_list)                                             # Print example list
# [1, 4, 2, 9, 7, 2, 1, 8, 3, 3, 2, 1]

In the next step, we can apply the max function to return the maximum of our list:

print(max(my_list))                                        # Get max of list
# 9

As you can see, the max value in our list is 9.

Similar to that, we can apply the min function to return the minimum value in our list:

print(min(my_list))                                        # Get min of list
# 1

The minimum value in our list is 1.

Example 2: Maximum & Minimum of One Particular Column in pandas DataFrame

In Example 2, I’ll demonstrate how to get the max and min numbers in a pandas DataFrame column.

As a first step, we have to load the pandas library to Python:

import pandas as pd                                        # Import pandas library to Python

Furthermore, we have to create an example pandas DataFrame:

data = pd.DataFrame({'x1':[5, 2, 4, 2, 2, 3, 9, 1, 7, 5],  # Create pandas DataFrame
                     'x2':range(10, 20),
                     'group':['A', 'A', 'B', 'B', 'C', 'A', 'C', 'C', 'A', 'B']})
print(data)                                                # Print pandas DataFrame

As shown in Table 1, the previous Python programming code has created a new pandas DataFrame containing three columns.

Let’s return the maximum value of the variable x1…

print(data['x1'].max())                                    # Get max of one column
# 9

…and the minimum value as well:

print(data['x1'].min())                                    # Get min of one column
# 1

Example 3: Maximum & Minimum of All Columns in pandas DataFrame

In the previous example, I have explained how to compute the maximum and minimum value in one single column of a pandas DataFrame.

In this example, I’ll explain how to find the maxima and minima of all columns.

For this task, we can apply the max…

print(data.max())                                          # Get max of all columns
# x1        9
# x2       19
# group     C
# dtype: object

…and min functions to our entire data set:

print(data.min())                                          # Get min of all columns
# x1        1
# x2       10
# group     A
# dtype: object

The previous console outputs show the maxima and minima of our three DataFrame columns. Note that even the alphabetical maxima and minima was returned for the group column.

Example 4: Maximum & Minimum of Rows in pandas DataFrame

The following code demonstrates how to find the max and min values for each row of a pandas DataFrame.

To achieve this, we have to specify the axis argument to be equal to 1 within the max…

print(data.max(axis = 1, numeric_only = True))             # Get max of rows
# 0    10
# 1    11
# 2    12
# 3    13
# 4    14
# 5    15
# 6    16
# 7    17
# 8    18
# 9    19
# dtype: int64

…and min commands:

print(data.min(axis = 1, numeric_only = True))             # Get min of rows
# 0    5
# 1    2
# 2    4
# 3    2
# 4    2
# 5    3
# 6    9
# 7    1
# 8    7
# 9    5
# dtype: int64

Example 5: Maximum & Minimum by Group in pandas DataFrame

It is also possible to get the maxima and minima in the columns of a pandas DataFrame by group.

Example 5 shows how to use the group column in our exemplifying data set to return multiple max and min values.

The following code prints the maxima for each group…

print(data.groupby('group').max())                         # Get max by group
#        x1  x2
# group        
# A       7  18
# B       5  19
# C       9  17

…and the following Python syntax shows the minima by group:

print(data.groupby('group').min())                         # Get min by group
#        x1  x2
# group        
# A       2  10
# B       2  12
# C       1  14

Video & Further Resources

Some time ago, I have published a video on my YouTube channel, which explains the Python codes of this tutorial. You can find the video below:

Furthermore, you may want to read some related articles on this homepage:

• Max & Min by Group in Python
• Get Max & Min Value of Column & Index in pandas DataFrame
• Max & Min of NumPy Array in Python
• Summary Statistics of pandas DataFrame
• Basic Course for the pandas Library in Python
• Python Programming Examples

In this article, I have shown how to calculate the maximum and minimum in the Python programming language. In case you have further questions, please let me know in the comments section.