We’ll use an iterative solution to the following problem: find the minimum value in a list.

def find_min(my_list):
  min = None
  for element in my_list:
    if not min or (element < min):
      min = element
  return min

find_min([42, 17, 2, -1, 67])
# -1
find_mind([])
# None
find_min([13, 72, 19, 5, 86])
# 5

This solution has a linear runtime, or O(N), where N is the number of elements in the list.