MATLAB: Get error message of ‘Error using max Invalid data type. First argument must be numeric or logical’ when I attempt to apply max function to a column of data

error

Hi,
I'm new to MATLAB and am trying to apply the max function to the following column of data:
     6.1101 
     5.5277 
     8.5186 
     7.0032 
     5.8598 
     8.3829 
     7.4764 
     8.5781 
     6.4862 
     5.0546 
     5.7107 
     14.164 
      5.734 
     8.4084 
     5.6407 
     5.3794 
     6.3654 
     5.1301 
     6.4296 
     7.0708 
     6.1891 
      20.27 
     5.4901 
     6.3261 
     5.5649 
     18.945 
     12.828 
     10.957 
     13.176 
     22.203 
     5.2524 
     6.5894 
     9.2482 
     5.8918 
     8.2111 
     7.9334 
     8.0959 
     5.6063 
     12.836 
     6.3534 
     5.4069 
     6.8825 
     11.708 
     5.7737 
     7.8247 
     7.0931 
     5.0702 
     5.8014 
       11.7 
     5.5416 
     7.5402 
     5.3077 
     7.4239 
     7.6031 
     6.3328 
     6.3589 
     6.2742 
     5.6397 
     9.3102 
     9.4536 
     8.8254 
     5.1793 
     21.279 
     14.908 
     18.959 
     7.2182 
     8.2951 
     10.236 
     5.4994 
     20.341 
     10.136 
     7.3345 
     6.0062 
     7.2259 
     5.0269 
     6.5479 
     7.5386 
     5.0365 
     10.274 
     5.1077 
     5.7292 
     5.1884 
     6.3557 
     9.7687 
     6.5159 
     8.5172 
     9.1802 
      6.002 
     5.5204 
     5.0594 
     5.7077 
     7.6366 
     5.8707 
     5.3054 
     8.2934 
     13.394 
     5.4369 
with the following response:
Error using max Invalid data type. First argument must be numeric or logical.
I can't see what I'm doing wrong.
Can someone please help ?
Thanks

Best Answer

Your data has class table. Tables are a container class: they contain data of other classes:
https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/tables.html
The max function, like most other numeric operations, only accepts data of numeric classes:
https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/numeric-types.html
You need to get the numeric data out of that table (container) before you can use it with a numeric operation. Getting numeric data out of a table is easy using any of the syntaxes that tables have for accessing their contents:
https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/matlab_prog/access-data-in-a-table.html
Probably you want something like
max(x.var)
where var is the name of the column (variable) in that table. You might find summary useful too.
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