Antplot: Visualising Long Binary Strings Using a Variation of Langton's Ant

Langton’s ant is an interesting example of cellular automata, displaying both chaotic and emergent behaviour. This paper presents a simple integer-based numeric expression which generates the trajectory of Langton’s ant on an infinite plane, and extends the technique so that binary strings of arbitrary length can be represented graphically. Patterns created by applying this technique to the mathematical constants e and pi are presented, together with those for a selection of long factorial and reciprocal values.