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The article presents information on a method or algorithm for finding proposals on which all members of a group can agree. The method is confined to situations where the variables can be changed by any "small" amount and, where the group is attempting to decide on a change in the variables from some "existing situation." A possible change in the variables will be called a "proposal." A proposal would be "acceptable" to an individual if it would increase his utility. The problem is not to pick a particular proposal which is acceptable to all individuals.

The general problem of interdisciplinary relations and transdisciplinary integration has its counterpart in the field of education in the problem of producing generalists rather than specialists, and at the undergraduate college level, in the problem of devising a rational core curriculum. At present, neither the student nor the faculty knows why one mixture of courses is better or worse than another. This paper advocates a solution to this problem based on the development of a computerized model of the core curriculum in which the interrelated mutually relevant concepts of various disciplines would be associated with teaching time allocations proportional to their degree of conceptual relevance. The foundation for such a development is laid by a discussion of conceptual vs. personal relevance, of acculturation vs. exculturation, of education vs. instruction, and of immediate vs. delayed motivation. An algorithmic procedure is then outlined which would result in a dynamic model allowing the determination of educational bottlenecks or critical paths in the communication network transforming inputs into outputs. The general concepts of dynamic programming, program evaluation and review techniques, system and decision theory are used in developing the algorithm. The existence of such a model would allow a rational optimization of the curriculum and would make the present perennial trial-and-error experimentation in curriculum design unnecessary, since the computer could test various alternatives quickly and efficiently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Pattern recognition" is a field of techniques for distinguishing significant phenomena, for determining on the whether a phenomenon is a known type or into a number of groups, etc. cybernetics which develops common properties of some basis of these properties not, for clustering phenomena into a number of groups, etc. Pattern is a name of a set of objects or phenomena distinguished according to a specific problem, bearing resemblance to each other and differing from the objects of other sets. Depending on the specific objective of the research one and the same pair of objects may be related to one pattern or to different ones. The hypothesis of "the simplicity of structural regularities" assumes the construction of a decision rule describing special features in the structure of the set of points in the given pattern. The points may be by no means "solidly" beside each other, but if there is some regularity in their array it should attract the attention. In order to secure the regularity against the influence of arbitrariness because of choosing scales of devices which measure properties, the isomorphism between the considered system with relations and the numerical model of this system is required.