Max and min value in list of dicts where each dict key has a value

Question

All the answers I found to this seem to make you have to specify which key you want to find the max/min for e.g. Finding minimum values in a list of dicts.

I have a list of dicts like:

 [
{
    1:34,
    2:12,
    3:24
},
{
    1:121,
    2:1211,
    3:1891
},
{
    1:191,
    2:8991,
    3:3232
}
]

So here it would pull out 12 and 8991.

And I want to find the max and min of all the values in this list of dicts.

How do I do this without having to specify each key separately (e.g. 1,2,3) - in the real version I have 20+.

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 28 '16 at 00:08

2

You can use a list comprehension or generator expression.

max([max(d.values()) for d in data])

answered Aug 28 '16 at 00:08

Daniel Roseman

You can use a generator instead of a comprehension by removing the `[]`. – TigerhawkT3 Aug 28 '16 at 00:13

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 28 '16 at 00:07

1

You can flatten the values, then find the min and max:

from itertools import chain

flattened = list(chain(*(d.values() for d in list_of_dicts)))
print(min(flattened))
print(max(flattened))

answered Aug 28 '16 at 00:07

Karin

2 Answers2