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Python | Program to find the position of minimum and maximum elements of a list

Position of minimum and maximum elements of a Python list: In this tutorial, we will learn how to find and print the position/index of the minimum and maximum elements of a Python list. And, we will write a program to solve this problem. By IncludeHelp Last updated : June 22, 2023

Prerequisite

Problem Statement

Given a Python list and we have to find the index/position of the minimum and maximum elements of a list.

Consider the below example with the sample input/output values:

Input:
list = [10, 1, 2, 20, 3, 20]

Output:
Positive of minimum element:  1
Positive of maximum element:  3

How to find the position of minimum and maximum elements of a Python list?

To find the positions/indexes of minimum and maximum elements of a list, we need to find the maximum and minimum elements of the list – to find the maximum element of the list, we will use max(list) and to find the minimum element of the list, we will use min(list).

To get the positions/indices of these minimum and maximum elements, you can use the list.index() method. Thus, the statements to get the positions will be list.index(max(list)) and list.index(min(list)) respectively.

Program

# declare a list of Integers
list = [10, 1, 2, 20, 3, 20]

# min element's position/index
min = list.index (min(list))
# max element's position/index
max = list.index (max(list))

# printing the position/index of 
# min and max elements
print("position of minimum element: ", min)
print("position of maximum element: ", max)

Output

position of minimum element:  1
position of maximum element:  3

Code Explanation

The minimum number of the list is 1 and it is at 1^st position in the list. To get it’s index, we use list.index(min(list)) statement, min(list) returns 1 (as minimum element) and list.index(1) returns the index of 1 from the list. Hence, the position of minimum element is: 1
The maximum number of the list if 20 and it is two times in the list, first occurrence of 20 is at 3^rd position and the second occurrence of 20 is at 5^th position. Statement max(list) returns the maximum element of the list, which is 20 and the statement list.index(20) returns the index/position of first matched element. Hence, the position of maximum element is: 3