A mathematical problem.

[Ingolifs]

Well it seems Aenarion is very close, and lighthouseguard may have figured it out as well.

No one has given me a full description of how the y values on the plot are actually calculated, but now that the pattern has been spotted, it should be reasonably straightforward.

 

[Mage246]

Well I figured out what x is, but I still don't know what the graph is measuring. Then again, I'm not really putting much effort into it. Will be curious to find out what it is, though.

 

[Voutare]

What is this a graph of?

The first one to guess gets 496 kudos. Oh and ignore that label.

A squiggly line.

I win.

 

[Ativan]

****, I've found it (I guess). But I really think this function lacks an absolute value

 

[LighthouseGuard]

I did send you a PM Ingolifs, is it right?

****, I've found it (I guess). But I really think this function lacks an absolute value

It's a nice graph, I never would've thought the peaks would be so linear, and the period so regular. Maybe it'll change with bigger values. Then again, that's what made me think those were experimental values...

 

[Ingolifs]

Ok, i'll give 496 kudos each to Ativan, Lighthouseguard and Aenarion.

The graph is a plot of n against n -(the sum of the divisors of n) from n=1 to n=64.

This graph shows some interesting patterns.

As you can see, the prime numbers all occur along the red line.
The teal line underneath runs through all numbers that are triples of prime numbers (such as 51, which is 17 x 3)
The blue line underneath that runs through all numbers that are doubles of primes. The slope of the line is half that of the red line.
All powers of two occur along the green line, and will never deviate from a value of 1.
The perfect numbers (6 and 2 are marked with purple and occur at the baseline.
All multiples of twelve (the extremely negative values) are marked with dark yellow. The relationship between values is not linear, and I cannot tell what it might be.
(here are the values)
12 -4
24  -12
36  -19
48  -30
60  -56
It doesn't resemble any pattern I know.

Lastly (and I forgot to draw this in), most square numbers appear much higher than the other numbers, often just below the prime numbers. This is because the square number has a repeating factor (say, 7x7 for 49), which is only counted once.

So yeah. There are some interesting patterns in this graph. Are there any others you can find?

 

[Mage246]

Ah looks like I was way off. Seeing as how it went up to 64, and each year has 12 months and we're on the fourth month of this year, I figured X corresponded to a timeline.