First Friday Math Seminar

Join us for the final First Friday Math Seminar of the semester! This seminar will feature a talk by Sam Ferguson, PhD, George Mason University, titled "Obamacare and a Fix for the IRS Iteration."

Since 2010, it has been an unsolved math problem at the IRS to determine the amount of Obamacare benefits in general. This is because, for Uber drivers and other self-employed people, there is a circular relationship in the Internal Revenue Code. In other words, certain items on income tax forms can depend on later items which aren't known, preventing Americans from calculating their Obamacare benefits. In 2014, the IRS created an algorithm involving a sequence of approximations, called a fixed point iteration, as an attempted resolution. In this talk, Ferguson shares insight into how the IRS iteration fails in general, how an elementary idea from calculus-⁠⁠-⁠inspired by a proof of the Intermediate Value Theorem-⁠-⁠⁠fixes the problem, how Ferguson found out about the problem from an Uber driver in the first place, and how the IRS came to agree with their solution.

Join via Zoom:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/9912657353?pwd=eS9uYUJaU0d6bWl1eGFKbCtqMUtEdz09

This event is free and open to the public.