Answer
The maximum (which is returned) is $14.$
Check the solution for the series of steps.
Work Step by Step
The list is ${1, 8, 12, 9, 11, 2, 14, 5, 10, 4}.$
First, the algorithm sets max to be the first element which is $1$.
It then begins looping over the list of numbers; It compares $1$ to $8$ and finds that $8$ is larger than one and hence assigns it to max. After that, it compares $12$ and $8$; seeing as $12$ is larger than $8$, it gets assigned to max.
After this, $12$ gets compared to the next three numbers $9, 11, 2$ without any assignment or updates since all of them are less than $12$. The next number was $14$ which is greater than $12$ and gets assigned to max. Then, $14$ is greater than the remaining $3$ numbers $(5, 10, 4)$ and hence, no changes were done to max.
Finally, the algorithm returns max which in this case is $14.$
