How do I find the largest value in a column in postgres sql?

Question

For example:

name | weight
jon    100    
jane   120    
joe    130

How do I only return the name of the person with the largest weight?

Answer 1

ORDER BY DESC puts rows with null values at the top.

To avoid returning results corresponding to null values:

SELECT name FROM tbl WHERE weight = (SELECT MAX(weight) FROM tbl);

Note: This query will return multiple results if multiple people have a weight equal to the maximum weight. To grab just one, add LIMIT 1 to the end of the query.

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Acknowledgements and more information:

Why do NULL values come first when ordering DESC in a PostgreSQL query?

MIN/MAX vs ORDER BY and LIMIT

Postgres MAX Function