finding the unique minimum value python

Question

Given a list of numbers.

lst=[1,1,2,4,8,2]

find the unique minimum value

Ideally the answer should be 4, But how do we get to 4?

Its not aduplicate, please review the question first, Thanks — Yovng_blood
– Yovng_blood, Commented Sep 23, 2019 at 9:06
Possible duplicate of Python: Finding Lowest Unique Integer from List — DUDANF
– DUDANF, Commented Sep 23, 2019 at 9:24

Rakesh · Accepted Answer · 2019-09-23 08:56:02Z

1

This is one approach.

Ex:

lst=[1,1,2,4,8,2]
print(min([i for i in set(lst) if lst.count(i) == 1]))
# --> 4

answered Sep 23, 2019 at 8:56

Rakesh

82.9k17 gold badges85 silver badges122 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

4 Comments

Yovng_blood Over a year ago

Can you please explain what you did? I can see a for loop, you changed the list to a set removing the duplicates

Rakesh Over a year ago

I am iterating each element of lst and filtering out the elements that have a count not equal to 1 and then applying min.

Netwave Over a year ago

This works but is highly inefficient for large collections, leaving it here as a note.

Trenton McKinney Over a year ago

Here are some guidelines for How do I write a good answer?. This provided answer may be correct, but it could benefit from an explanation. Code only answers are not considered "good" answers. From review.

DUDANF · Accepted Answer · 2019-09-23 08:58:53Z

0

Basically, how you do this is you first sort the list. And then you check from the lowest if the count == 1. If the count != 1 keep checking until you find the 'unique' number.

def get_lowest_and_unique(lst):
    for x in sorted(list(set(lst))):
        if lst.count(x) == 1:
            return x
    print("Could not find the correct element!")

answered Sep 23, 2019 at 8:58

DUDANF

3,0481 gold badge18 silver badges47 bronze badges

Comments

Netwave · Accepted Answer · 2019-09-23 09:18:36Z

0

I would say that the best option is to use collections.Counter:

from collections import Counter
lst=[1,1,2,4,8,2]
c = Counter(lst)
min(v for v, n in c.items() if n == 1)
4

answered Sep 23, 2019 at 9:18

Netwave

43.2k6 gold badges69 silver badges111 bronze badges

Comments

abhilb · Accepted Answer · 2019-09-23 08:58:00Z

-1

try

t = list(set(lst))
list.sort(t)
unique_min = t[0]

answered Sep 23, 2019 at 8:58

abhilb

5,7672 gold badges22 silver badges26 bronze badges

5 Comments

Philipp Over a year ago

This evaluates to 1 while the answer should be 4.

Georgina Skibinski Over a year ago

It's also the same, as regular min(lst)

Philipp Over a year ago

@GrzegorzSkibinski It's the same as min(sorted(lst))

Tomerikoo Over a year ago

doing set(lst) makes all elements unique... You need to first filter-out the duplicates and then look for the minimum. @Philipp well, min(sorted(lst)) and min(lst) should probably be the same thing...

Philipp Over a year ago

@Tomerikoo That is correct. I was thinking that min would be just accessing the first element for some reason.

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

finding the unique minimum value python

4 Answers 4

4 Comments

Comments

Comments

5 Comments

Your Answer

Linked

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

4 Answers 4

4 Comments

Comments

Comments

5 Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Linked

Related