How do I get indices of N maximum values in a NumPy array?

Question

NumPy proposes a way to get the index of the maximum value of an array via np.argmax.

I would like a similar thing, but returning the indexes of the

Answer 1

For multidimensional arrays you can use the axis keyword in order to apply the partitioning along the expected axis.

# For a 2D array
indices = np.argpartition(arr, -N, axis=1)[:, -N:]

And for grabbing the items:

x = arr.shape[0]
arr[np.repeat(np.arange(x), N), indices.ravel()].reshape(x, N)

But note that this won't return a sorted result. In that case you can use np.argsort() along the intended axis:

indices = np.argsort(arr, axis=1)[:, -N:]

# Result
x = arr.shape[0]
arr[np.repeat(np.arange(x), N), indices.ravel()].reshape(x, N)

Here is an example:

In [42]: a = np.random.randint(0, 20, (10, 10))

In [44]: a
Out[44]:
array([[ 7, 11, 12,  0,  2,  3,  4, 10,  6, 10],
       [16, 16,  4,  3, 18,  5, 10,  4, 14,  9],
       [ 2,  9, 15, 12, 18,  3, 13, 11,  5, 10],
       [14,  0,  9, 11,  1,  4,  9, 19, 18, 12],
       [ 0, 10,  5, 15,  9, 18,  5,  2, 16, 19],
       [14, 19,  3, 11, 13, 11, 13, 11,  1, 14],
       [ 7, 15, 18,  6,  5, 13,  1,  7,  9, 19],
       [11, 17, 11, 16, 14,  3, 16,  1, 12, 19],
       [ 2,  4, 14,  8,  6,  9, 14,  9,  1,  5],
       [ 1, 10, 15,  0,  1,  9, 18,  2,  2, 12]])

In [45]: np.argpartition(a, np.argmin(a, axis=0))[:, 1:] # 1 is because the first item is the minimum one.
Out[45]:
array([[4, 5, 6, 8, 0, 7, 9, 1, 2],
       [2, 7, 5, 9, 6, 8, 1, 0, 4],
       [5, 8, 1, 9, 7, 3, 6, 2, 4],
       [4, 5, 2, 6, 3, 9, 0, 8, 7],
       [7, 2, 6, 4, 1, 3, 8, 5, 9],
       [2, 3, 5, 7, 6, 4, 0, 9, 1],
       [4, 3, 0, 7, 8, 5, 1, 2, 9],
       [5, 2, 0, 8, 4, 6, 3, 1, 9],
       [0, 1, 9, 4, 3, 7, 5, 2, 6],
       [0, 4, 7, 8, 5, 1, 9, 2, 6]])

In [46]: np.argpartition(a, np.argmin(a, axis=0))[:, -3:]
Out[46]:
array([[9, 1, 2],
       [1, 0, 4],
       [6, 2, 4],
       [0, 8, 7],
       [8, 5, 9],
       [0, 9, 1],
       [1, 2, 9],
       [3, 1, 9],
       [5, 2, 6],
       [9, 2, 6]])

In [89]: a[np.repeat(np.arange(x), 3), ind.ravel()].reshape(x, 3)
Out[89]:
array([[10, 11, 12],
       [16, 16, 18],
       [13, 15, 18],
       [14, 18, 19],
       [16, 18, 19],
       [14, 14, 19],
       [15, 18, 19],
       [16, 17, 19],
       [ 9, 14, 14],
       [12, 15, 18]])