Find maximum and minimum number of an array.

Q: Find maximum and minimum number of an array.

Math.max.apply(null, arr); Math.min.apply(null, arr); //recursive method function find_max_in_array(arr, index = 0, max = null) { if (arr.length == index) { return max; } if (arr[index] > max) { max = arr[index]; } return find_max_in_array(arr, index + 1, max); } console.log(find_max_in_array(arr));

Difficulty: 4/10

Array reduction, Memory limits, Performance optimization

Example code:

Scenario Questions

0-2 years experience

1We are building a simple dashboard widget that displays the lowest and highest temperature recorded today from an array of hourly readings. How would you write a function to extract these two values? What should your code return if the sensor data array is empty?
2A colleague used `Math.min(...temperatures)` and `Math.max(...temperatures)` to find the range of a dataset. It works fine in local testing, but what might go wrong with this approach if the dataset grows to tens of thousands of items, and how would you write a safer alternative?

Follow-up Questions

What is the maximum array size your solution can handle before hitting engine-specific memory or call stack limits?
How would you modify your approach if the array was a stream of numbers arriving over a WebSocket rather than a static in-memory array?
If the array contains NaN or undefined values, how does your current implementation behave, and how would you make it resilient?