Visual Numbers #2

Factors: The numbers from 1 to 500 are plotted horizontally across the top row. Along each vertical column, if N divides the number X (represented here by distance across the top row) evenly (that is, if N is a factor of X), then the pixel N pixels down from the top is black.

Prime Factors: The same general principle as above, but in this image, only the prime factors are shown.

Blue Over Yellow: Basically, a combination of the previous two images. Numbers from 1 to 250 are plotted horizontally, and factors are plotted vertically. If a factor is prime, the little square representing it is blue, otherwise, it’s yellow.

That tantalizing structure is still just slightly out of reach…Oh well, back to work!

Visual Numbers #1

This is the beginning of what I hope will be a fairly long-running series of posts, each containing one or two (or three, if I’m feeling adventurous) numerical or mathematical visualizations. If you need a concrete example of what I’m talking about, just check out the image here).

Anyway, here goes:

Meet the Primes: Every pixel represents a number from 1 to 250,000. The image wraps horizontally; that is, the first pixel of the first row is the number 1, the first pixel of the second row is 501 (since each row is 500 pixels wide), the first pixel of the third row is 101, and so on and so on. Pixels representing prime numbers are black. From this view, it’s quite obvious that there’s likely some sort of structure to the primes, but it’s hard to say what that structure might be.