Question

I am writing a program that calculates the minimum and maximum of 10 numbers from a list (data1). I am receiving a “TypeError: ‘float’ object is not iterable” for the following lines:

temp_min10=min(data1[x-z][3])
temp_max10=max(data1[x-z][2])

Full program:

x=int(0)
for line in data1:
    if x>=9:
        min10=0
        max10=0
        for z in range(0,10):
            temp_min10 = temp_max10 = 0
            temp_min10=min(data1[x-z][3])
            if temp_min10<min10:
                min10=temp_min10
            temp_max10=max(data1[x-z][2])
            if temp_max10>max10:
                max10=temp_max10
            d_chan.append([max10,min10])
    else:
        d_chan.append([0,0])
        x+=1

Thanks for any help!

Answer 1

The possible args for min and max are either one iterable or 2 or more scalars. Docs here. You have given it one arg which is not an iterable; it’s a float.

Aside: (1) Your indentation as displayed is patently incorrect. You need to (a) avoid tabs in your source file (b) ensure that your indentation is logically correct. (2) Your code is iterating for line in data1: but never mentions line again; looks like you need to check carefully what you are doing with x; it’s not obvious.

Update after reading your code again:

The following code will probably do what you want.

# These assertions state the presumed effect of code that you have not included.
assert len(data1) == 10
assert d_chan == []
# I suspect a typo in the OP ... it makes more sense for the 
# two values below to be the same.
MIN_COL = 3
MAX_COL = 2
d_chan = [[0, 0] for i in xrange(9)]
min10 = min(data1[i][MIN_COL] for i in xrange(10))      
max10 = max(data1[i][MAX_COL] for i in xrange(10))
d_chan.append([max10, min10])