[matlab] How can I find the maximum value and its index in array in MATLAB?

Suppose I have an array, a = [2 5 4 7]. What is the function returning the maximum value and its index?

For example, in my case that function should return 7 as the maximum value and 4 as the index.

This question is related to matlab max matrix-indexing

The answer is


You can use max() to get the max value. The max function can also return the index of the maximum value in the vector. To get this, assign the result of the call to max to a two element vector instead of just a single variable.

e.g. z is your array,

>> [x, y] = max(z)

x =

7

y =

4

Here, 7 is the largest number at the 4th position(index).


For a matrix you can use this:

[M,I] = max(A(:))

I is the index of A(:) containing the largest element.

Now, use the ind2sub function to extract the row and column indices of A corresponding to the largest element.

[I_row, I_col] = ind2sub(size(A),I)

source: https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/max.html


In case of a 2D array (matrix), you can use:

[val, idx] = max(A, [], 2);

The idx part will contain the column number of containing the max element of each row.


This will return the maximum value in a matrix

max(M1(:))

This will return the row and the column of that value

[x,y]=ind2sub(size(M1),max(M1(:)))

For minimum just swap the word max with min and that's all.


3D case

Modifying Mohsen's answer for 3D array:

[M,I] = max (A(:));
[ind1, ind2, ind3] = ind2sub(size(A),I)