Find minimum of two values in Python

Question

How to program this expression in Python:

min{cos(2xπ), 1/2}

?

I have tried:

x = np.array([1,2,3,4,5,3,2,5,7])

solution = np.min(np.cos(2*x*np.pi), 1/2)

But it does not work, and there is the following mistake:

TypeError: 'float' object cannot be interpreted as an integer.

Screenshot of my code

Please have a look at: stackoverflow.com/help/mcve. Thank you! — Thomas Junk
– Thomas Junk, Commented Feb 5, 2018 at 8:39
@VikasDamodar Yes, cos of each value in x is a part of solution — maril
– maril, Commented Feb 5, 2018 at 8:48
I used your inputs and got an answer of 1.0 in IPython. I don't understand why jupyter is giving you an error. You can try creating temporary variables to store intermediate results. I am using Python 2. Are you on Python 3? — Vineet Bhat
– Vineet Bhat, Commented Feb 5, 2018 at 9:02
Possible duplicate of Short Python Code to say "Pick the lower value"? — Ulf Aslak
– Ulf Aslak, Commented Feb 5, 2018 at 9:03

Vikas Periyadath · Accepted Answer · 2018-02-05 09:08:55Z

1

I have tried your code with np.minimum like this :

import numpy as np

x = np.array([1,2,3,4,5,3,2,5,7])

solution = np.minimum(np.cos(2*x*np.pi), 1/2)
print(solution)

which gives something like this :

[ 0.5  0.5  0.5  0.5  0.5  0.5  0.5  0.5  0.5]

the minimum function will check through each element of array and returns an array. you can take a look here

answered Feb 5, 2018 at 9:01

Vikas Periyadath

3,1961 gold badge25 silver badges35 bronze badges

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

3 Comments

Actually, with both python 2 and 3, I get output [0. 0. 0. 0. 0. 0. 0. 0. 0.] (yes, 0., not 0.5)

@ChatterOne iam giving here a link you can check the code there : repl.it/repls/NimbleWhisperedHalicore

This is correct solution if you want element wise minimum.