Getting the key of the element with the highest value? The value is another dictionary

Question

I am trying to find the key of element which has the highest value. The values are another dictionary, so the method mentioned over here: Getting key with maximum value in dictionary? cannot be used.

The structure is like this:

{'a': {'points': 7, 'difference': 0}, 'b': {'points': 6, 'difference': 1}, 'c': {'points': 4, 'difference': -3}, 'd': {'points': 7, 'difference': 2}}

The element which has the most number of points should be the max element, and if points are same then the element with the larger difference should be chosen.

So the max element in this case is d.

I know I can I use for loop and find the maximum element, but is there any other way to do it?

Yes there are other ways to do it. Are you having trouble with one of your solutions? — wwii, Apr 22 '19 at 23:09
The builtin `max` function takes a key function (which should return the number of points). — Michael Butscher, Apr 22 '19 at 23:10

SyntaxVoid · Accepted Answer · 2019-04-23T16:34:04.043

1

d = {'a': {'points': 7, 'difference': 0}, 'b': {'points': 6, 'difference': 1}, 'c': {'points': 4, 'difference': -3}, 'd': {'points': 7, 'difference': 2}}

result = max(d.keys(), key = lambda k: (a[k]["points"], a[k]["difference"]))

result will give you the maximum key based on that key's points (or that key's differences if the points are a tie)

edited Apr 23 '19 at 16:34

answered Apr 22 '19 at 23:14

SyntaxVoid

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Chiheb Nexus · Answer 2 · 2019-04-22T23:26:06.107

You can do something like this:

my_dict = {'a': {'points': 7, 'difference': 0}, 'b': {'points': 6, 'difference': 1}, 'c': {'points': 4, 'difference': -3}, 'd': {'points': 7, 'difference': 2}}

_key, _value = '', {'points': 0, 'difference': 0}

for key, elm in my_dict.items():
    if elm['points'] >= _value['points']:
        if elm['difference'] >= _value['difference']:
            _key, _value = key, elm

out = {_key: _value}
print(out)

Output:

{'d': {'points': 7, 'difference': 2}}

Or, using max:

out = max(my_dict.items(), key=lambda k: (k[1]['points'], k[1]['difference']))

out:

('d', {'points': 7, 'difference': 2})

Getting the key of the element with the highest value? The value is another dictionary

2 Answers2