Finding the local maxima in a 1D array

This will return an array of all peaks (local maxima) in the given array of integers, taking care of the plateaus as well:

function findPeaks(arr) {
  var peak;
  return arr.reduce(function(peaks, val, i) {
    if (arr[i+1] > arr[i]) {
      peak = arr[i+1];
    } else if ((arr[i+1] < arr[i]) && (typeof peak === 'number')) {
      peaks.push(peak);
      peak = undefined;
    }
    return peaks;
  }, []);
}

findPeaks([1,3,2,5,3])   // -> [3, 5]
findPeaks([1,3,3,3,2])   // -> [3]
findPeaks([-1,0,0,-1,3]) // -> [0]
findPeaks([5,3,3,3,4])   // -> []

Note that the first and last elements of the array are not considered as peaks, because in the context of a mathematical function we don't know what precedes or follows them and so cannot tell if they are peaks or not.

maxes = []
for (var i = 1; i < a.length - 1; ++i) {
    if (a[i-1] < a[i] && a[i] > a[i+1])
        maxes.push(a[i])
}