Python - Get max value in a list of dict

Question

I have a dataset with this structure :

In[17]: allIndices
Out[17]: 
[{0: 0, 1: 1.4589, 4: 2.4879},
{0: 1.4589, 1: 0, 2: 2.1547},
{1: 2.1547, 2: 0, 3: 4.2114},
{2: 4.2114, 3: 0},
{0: 2.4879, 4: 0}]

I'd like to identify the highest value inside the list of dict. I do as follow :

def findMax(data):

    possiblemax = []
    for i in range(len(data)):
        temp = list(data[i].values())
        tempmax = max(temp)
        possiblemax.append(tempmax)

    maxValue = max(possiblemax)
    return maxValue

It works but I work with a very large dataset and it's a little bit slow. I was wondering of a better and faster way of doing this.

Thanks a lot

Answer 1

I think the one liner version is succinct without being unreadable:

my_list = [{0: 0, 1: 1.4589, 4: 2.4879},
           {0: 1.4589, 1: 0, 2: 2.1547},
           {1: 2.1547, 2: 0, 3: 4.2114},
           {2: 4.2114, 3: 0},
           {0: 2.4879, 4: 0}]
print(max(max(part.values()) for part in my_list))

Python 3 code. Use dict.itervalues() for Python 2.