Mystery Image...

Chances are that you will not be able to figure out what this image represents.  Even if I told you that it was a heat map.  Even if I told you that the axes represent the integers 1..50 (increasing left-to-right and top-to-bottom).

Give up?

The brighter colors represent smaller numbers, the duller colors larger.  The heat map shows the number of digits in the product of x and y, as expressed in Roman numerals.

Figuring out why there are visual patterns to the result is left as an exercise for the reader.

Yes, this is the work of Nick Berry – who else would it be?