How can i find the column number in an array?

I have imported data from a .txt file into matlab. The question is to find the column number of the column with the highest average. How do I find the column number that corresponds to the highest average value?

Answer 1

[per isakson]

Try this

M = rand( 6 ); % Sample data
[~,ixc] = max(mean( M, 1 ));

[Priyanka Bhasker]

This works! Thanks so much :)

[Image Analyst]

It will only work if the max appears once in the column. If it appears multiple times it will only find the first one. It's usually not a concern with floating point numbers, but could happen if your data are integers.

[per isakson]

Programming is complicated:(

"How do I find the column number that corresponds to the highest average value?" So I added: Given that there is such a number.

[Image Analyst]

Well as long as the matrix is not all null or all nan, there will be a max, and it will occur at one or more columns. Super robust code would check for the "all null" or "all nan" situation.

[per isakson]

Thank you for your comments. I just learned that both mean and max have nanflag the deault values of which are different.

"all null", but there is no null in Matlab?