title: Min and max functions returns incorrect values
body: <p>I am using python 2.7 to find highest and lowest values in an text file. </p>
  
  <p>The text file is simply formatted with one Integer value at each line.
  The following code collects the numbers from the file:</p>
  
  <pre><code>with open(data_file, 'r') as f:
      data_list = f.readlines()
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Then I try to reach for the maximum and minimum values with:</p>
  
  <pre><code>max_value =  max(data_list)
  min_value = min(data_list)
  print('Max value: '+ str(max_value) + ' Min value: ' + str(min_value))
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>What I then get from the print is:
  Max value: 8974
   Min value: 11239</p>
  
  <p>How can the max value be smaller than the minimum? I have also tried printing the whole list and there are both higher and lower values than what stated above. In the text file there are also higher and lower values than stated above.</p>
  
  <p>I feel that there might be something fundamentally wrong in my understanding of python, please help me pinpoint my misconception.</p>