Preface

I was playing around with "Math.min/max" and the result of empty calls looked like it was backwards.

empty math min max results

Question

Shouldn't Math.min return -Infinity while Math.max, Infinity?

MDN Documentations

MDN documentation on Math.max shows that

If no arguments are given, the result is -Infinity.

And Math.min documentation shows

If no arguments are given, the result is Infinity.

But why? 🤔

After some thinking, it made sense.

Suppose that you are passing one value to Math.min(3). The minimum should 3 as it's the sole value pass to the function. 3 should be lower than whatever the minimum JavaScript has to compare.

Any value other than Infinity itself (Infinity === Infinity is true) should be the minimum, and as 3 is smaller than Infinity, 3 is returned by Math.min.

Same thing for Math.max. If you call Math.max(3), 3 is bigger than -Infinity thus, 3 is returned.

But...

I am not exactly sure if my thought process is correct or not but at least it helps to understand what default values are returned when no argument is passed to Math.min/max functions.

Would anyone let me know if I understood the reason behind the return values?