How to find second largest number in a list?

Question

So I have to find the second largest number from list. I am doing it through simple loops.

My approach is to divide a list into two parts and then find the largest n

Answer 1

O(n^2) algorithm:

In [79]: alist=[-45,0,3,10,90,5,-2,4,18,45,100,1,-266,706]

In [80]: max(n for n in alist if n!=max(alist))
Out[80]: 100

O(n) algorithm:

In [81]: alist=[-45,0,3,10,90,5,-2,4,18,45,100,1,-266,706]

In [82]: M = max(alist)

In [83]: max(n for n in alist if n!=M)
Out[83]: 100