NumPy | argmax method
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NumPy's argmax(~)
method returns the index that corresponds to the largest element in the array.
If your array has missing values (i.e. NaN
s), then the np.argmax(~)
method will consider them as the largest value. If you want to ignore missing values, then use the np.nanargmax(~)
method instead.
Parameters
1. a
| array_like
The input array.
2. axis
| int
| optional
The axis along which to compute the method. For 2D arrays, if axis=0
, then the method is performed column-wise, and if axis=1
then row-wise. If no axis is provided, then NumPy will deem your array as a flattened array.
Return value
If no axis
is provided, then a scalar is returned. Otherwise, a NumPy array is returned.
Examples
One-dimensional arrays
np.argmax(x)
1
Here, 1 is returned because the largest value (i.e. 5) is located at index 1.
Two-dimensional arrays
Suppose we have the following 2D NumPy array:
x
array([[1, 5], [2, 3]])
Max index of entire array
To obtain the index of the maximum value in the entire array, leave out the axis
parameter:
np.argmax(x)
1
Max indices of every column
To obtain the index of the maximum values column-wise, set axis=0
:
np.argmax(x, axis=0)
array([1, 0])
Here, we're going over each column of the matrix and computing the index of its largest value.
Max indices of every row
To obtain the index of the maximum values row-wise, set axis=1
:
np.argmax(x, axis=1)
array([1, 1])
Here, we're going over each row of the matrix and computing the index of its largest value.