minVal

MinVal is a variable name commonly used in mathematical analysis and programming to represent the smallest value encountered in a dataset, the minimum of a function under given constraints, or the minimum value produced by a process. It is a conventional label rather than a formal mathematical term.

In algorithmic contexts, minVal typically stores the current smallest element found during a scan of a collection. A common pattern is to initialize minVal to a value known to be larger than any element in the input (such as a representation of positive infinity or the maximum value for the data type) and then update it whenever a smaller element is observed. This approach yields a single pass solution with linear time complexity relative to the number of elements.

Practical considerations include how to handle empty inputs and data types. Some implementations explicitly check for emptiness and return an error or a sentinel value, while others initialize minVal from the first element of the dataset. The choice of initialization can affect correctness and performance, especially with special numeric values like NaN or signed zeros.

MinVal is closely related to the concepts of minimum, argmin (the argument that minimizes a function), and related reductions used in sorting, optimization, and statistical calculations. While the exact name minVal is not universal, it remains a common, readable convention in code and analysis to denote a minimum value.

See also: minimum, argmin, maximum, reduction.