How to find biggest element of the array?

I am aware max(A) will give me the biggest element, however it gives me another array with all the biggest elements.

Is there a way to do something like max(max(A))?

[Sean de Wolski]

what's wrong with:

max(max(A)) %?

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

max(A(:))

Answer 2

[Cedric]

MAX works along a specific dimension (that you can specify using an extra arg). One way to find the overall max is to index A linearly and to pass this to MAX, e.g.:

 max(A(:))

[Feng Cheng Chang]

If A = [-1 0; -1000 -0.5], then px = max(A(:)) --> 0. The biggest element of the array is zero ?

We may perform as [px,i] = max(abs(A(:)); ax = A(i) --> -1000. The biggest element is then one thousand with minus sign !

FC Chang 4/7/2013

[Cedric]

Actually, the "biggest" element in your matrix A as defined by the original poster is 0, which is the absolute max. But I agree that "biggest" is not clear; however, the original poster clarifies the question by asking for an equivalent of max(max(A)).