It's worth reading this one to the end- the point of this paper isn't about the math involved, it's that this math was the result of the federal funding of maths research.

> The cost-benefit ratio of Mathematical research has been off-scale. The Federal government spends about $250 Million/year on mathematics research. Yet in the US there are 40 Million MRI scans per year, incurring tens of billions in Medicaid, Medicare and other Federal costs. The financial benefits of the roughly 10-to-1 productivity improvements now being seen in MRI could soon far exceed the annual NSF budget for mathematics research

It's the thing people don't get when they see odd studies being funded and try to judge if they're worthy of being funded. Either it's just they don't understand where the study fits into a larger problem or simply that esoteric studies sometimes leads to surprising findings that are far more useful than anyone could reasonable predict.

But have the scans got cheaper? It’s possibly that acceleration techniques have prevented the cost being greater, but key parts of the cost are not getting cheaper. Staffing costs are just so high.

Pricing a scan based on scanner time doesn’t really work.

Sounds more like the point is that math research has high ROI compared to most federally funded research

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