Re: Find the Max Value in a Vector

[Maynard Wright]

On Wednesday, February 08, 2012 12:46:00 pm Joanna Cheng wrote:
> > On Wednesday, February 08, 2012 07:45:42 am Michael Davidson wrote:
> > > Thank you for the help.  I apologize for the sassy question, but Octave
> > > problems were the straw that broke the camel's back on a bad day.  It
> > > appears that this was a PEBCAK.
> 
> No worries Michael, glad you got your problem resolved :)
> 
> On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 5:46 AM, Maynard Wright <address@hidden>wrote:
> > > On Tue, Feb 7, 2012 at 10:38 PM, Joanna Cheng
> > 
> > <address@hidden>wrote:
> > > > octave-3.2.4.exe:24> x=rand(20,1)
> > > > x =
> > > > 
> > > >    0.570176
> > > >    0.908796
> > > >    0.815253
> > > >    0.437041
> > > >    0.244348
> > > >    0.840917
> > > >    0.212318
> > > >    0.019978
> > > >    0.042693
> > > >    0.551441
> > > >    0.607535
> > > >    0.701187
> > > >    0.235667
> > > >    0.456407
> > > >    0.046169
> > > >    0.366124
> > > >    0.199947
> > > >    0.174513
> > > >    0.299213
> > > >    0.532349
> > > > 
> > > > octave-3.2.4.exe:25> max(x)
> > > > ans =  0.90880
> > >
> > >The values in your vector are printed using six decimal places.  Your
> > 
> > Octave
> > is set to display only five in its answers, the default.  0.908796, the
> > second
> > entry above, rounds to 0.90880.  Display one more place and you ought to
> > see
> > the two as the same.
> 
> Thanks for pointing that out Maynard, I hadn't acually noticed! I wonder if
> this is a bug.


I wouldn't think of it as a bug.  There are various ways to format the display 
of your variables.  Try 

format long

and 

format short

and after each,

x
max(x)

and you ought to see max(x) yielding the same precision as does x.  I often 
use printf() as it gives me control over the display that I'm used to using in 
C.


Maynard