obtain the max y-value of a histogram

Question

I am looking for suggestions on how to calculate the maximum y-value of a histogram.

#simple histogram. how can I obtain the maximum value of, say, x and y?

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
hdata = randn(500)
x = plt.hist(hdata)
y = plt.hist(hdata, bins=40)

Answer 1

hist returns a tuple that contains the histogram bin locations and y values. Try this:

y, x, _ = plt.hist(hdata)

print x.max()
print y.max()

Note that len(y) = len(x) - 1.