Visualizing (Number Theoretic) Functions with Portraits
Donald Spector

Proceedings of Bridges 2020: Mathematics, Art, Music, Architecture, Education, Culture
Pages 395–398
Short Papers

Abstract

I offer a way to determine properties of mathematical functions through a new visualization method that takes advantage of human perception of images. Since the digitization of images turns images into arrays of numbers, one can apply mathematical functions to images on a pixel-by-pixel basis. Thanks to the pattern recognition skills of humans, the form of the transformed images can give ready insight into the behavior of those mathematical functions. I explain the method and give some examples here, with a particular focus on number theoretic functions.

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