title: How do you find a maximum or minimum double from a set?
body: <p>In a basic java program, I've defined two methods of a class that are supposed to return the maximum and minimum numbers from a set of four doubles. The value parameter is taken in from a for loop, and then compared to the standing min or max parameter. However, the outputs are not correct and I cannot seem to find out why; I know I have made a logic error somewhere.</p>
  
  <p>The two methods-</p>
  
  <pre><code>//calculate the minimum 
  public double calcMin(double value, double min)
  {
      if (min &lt; value)
     {
         min = value;
     }
     return value;
  }
  
  //calculate the maximum
  public double calcMax(double value, double max)
  {
      if (max &lt; value)
      {
          max = value;
      }
      return max;
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The for loop-</p>
  
  <pre><code>    for (int i = 0; i &lt; fillups.length; i ++)
      {
          distance[i] = fillups[i].calcDistance();
          milesPerGallon[i] = fillups[i].calcMPG(distance[i]);
          cost[i] = fillups[i].calcTotalCost();
          minimum = fillups[i].calcMin(distance[i], minimum);
          maximum = fillups[i].calcMax(distance[i], maximum);
          minMPG = fillups[i].calcMin(milesPerGallon[i], minMPG);
          maxMPG = fillups[i].calcMax(milesPerGallon[i], maxMPG);
          minPrice = fillups[i].calcMin(price[i], minPrice);
          maxPrice = fillups[i].calcMax(price[i], maxPrice);
          fillups[i].printResults(i, day[i], distance[i], cost[i], milesPerGallon[i]);  
      } 
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The calcMax method seems to work, but the calcMin does not. Perhaps there is a way to make them work using the Double.MAX_VALUE and Double.MIN_VALUE constants.</p>