As a small coding exercise I will write some lines of Python code that find the maximum value in a list and return it. In Python, this can be done with a build-in default function called max(). I avoid using that function on purpose.

The function below is implemented in Python and returns a maximum value of a list

# calling the function "findMaximumValue"
def findMaximumValue( listObj ):
    # set first entry as largest value to start with
    maxVal = listObj[0]
    # cycle through each position in the list
    for i in range(0,len(listObj)):
        # if this value is greater than current maxVal then update maxVal
        if listObj[i] > maxVal:
            maxVal = listObj[i]
    # return maxVal
    return maxVal

Testing function on a test list

# defining test list
testList = [-1,-2,-3.3,-5,-5.001,0,1,10,1000]
# apply findMaximumValue
findMaximumValue(testList)

1000

The same could have been achieved using the max() function from Python base library

max(testList)

1000

Linnart Felkl

Data scientist focusing on simulation, optimization and modeling in R, SQL, VBA and Python