Find nth smallest element in numpy array [duplicate]

Answer 1

You can use heapq.nsmallest:

>>> import numpy as np
>>> import heapq
>>> 
>>> a = np.array([90,10,30,40,80,70,20,50,60,0])
>>> heapq.nsmallest(5, a)[-1]
40

Answer 2

Unless I am missing something, what you want to do is:

>>> a = np.array([90,10,30,40,80,70,20,50,60,0])
>>> np.partition(a, 4)[4]
40

np.partition(a, k) will place the k-th smallest element of a at a[k], smaller values in a[:k] and larger values in a[k+1:]. The only thing to be aware of is that, because of the 0 indexing, the fifth element is at index 4.

Answer 3

you don't need call numpy.max():

def nsmall(a, n):
    return np.partition(a, n)[n]