In mathematics, the maximum-minimums identity is a relation between the maximum element of a set S of n numbers and the minima of the 2ⁿ − 1 non-empty subsets of S.

Let S = {x₁, x₂, ..., x_n}. The identity states that

${\displaystyle {\begin{aligned}\max\{x_{1},x_{2},\ldots ,x_{n}\}&=\sum _{i=1}^{n}x_{i}-\sum _{i<j}\min\{x_{i},x_{j}\}+\sum _{i<j<k}\min\{x_{i},x_{j},x_{k}\}-\cdots \\&\qquad \cdots +\left(-1\right)^{n+1}\min\{x_{1},x_{2},\ldots ,x_{n}\},\end{aligned))}$

or conversely

${\displaystyle {\begin{aligned}\min\{x_{1},x_{2},\ldots ,x_{n}\}&=\sum _{i=1}^{n}x_{i}-\sum _{i<j}\max\{x_{i},x_{j}\}+\sum _{i<j<k}\max\{x_{i},x_{j},x_{k}\}-\cdots \\&\qquad \cdots +\left(-1\right)^{n+1}\max\{x_{1},x_{2},\ldots ,x_{n}\}.\end{aligned))}$

For a probabilistic proof, see the reference.