Getting a patent is an expensive business. Patentability of methods of manipulating numbers is variable around the world, but in most places its not going to wo

Getting a patent is an expensive business. Patentability of methods of manipulating numbers is variable around the world, but in most places its not going to work. You might have managed it in the US a few years ago, but not now. Seriously applying for a patent is not cheap. The odds are that you will spend a lot of money for no return. Getting priority for something on your CV is another matter. As others have mentioned, write up a paper and submit to arxiv.org. Incidentally, are you aware of this: http://www.mathpages.com/home/kmath505/kmath505.htm http://www.mathpages.com/home/kmath505/kmath505.htm The last couple of paragraphs describe a geometric construction giving an approximation that is good enough for many purposes, and would also be the right starting point for any iterative algorithm.