The mathematical exercise of the the Prisoner's Dilemma is used to explore the issue of whether present models or paradigms of policy analysis cover the complete range of rational decision making. A review of the competing paradigms of the cybernetic concept, the analytic probability concept, and the cognitive categorization concept reveals…

This is the fifth in a series of reports of a longitudinal study of the effects of the operation of a curriculum engineering system in a school district. Specific objectives were to observe the effects of leadership and curriculum engineering on teacher attitudes and teacher performance in a curriculum system and on student achievement. A causal…

This monograph provides a theoretical substantiation for benefit-cost analysis and cost-effectiveness analysis in school system planning. Nine examples of decision-making situations are presented. A simple case of a single objective to be attained with one plan being selected from a set of proposed plans with no resource constraints evolves into a…

This paper presents a mathematical model for use in determining student tuition charges at public and private institutions. This model treats higher education as an economic commodity, with the price to the consumer--in the form of tuition--as an algebraic function of supply, demand, and quality. The model provides one set of solutions to such…

The paper reviews the research on design and operation of research libraries sponsored by the Purdue University Libraries and the Purdue School of Industrial Engineering. The use of mathematical models in library operations research is discussed. Among the mathematical methods discussed are marginal analysis or cost minimization, computer…

The interests of economists in educational systems have taken two directions: (1) Concern for the interchange of resources between educational systems and the national economy, and (2) an interest in the production of education. In expressing the resource interchange, economists rely on the language of productivity. Of concern is the global…

With the rapid increase in number and size of junior colleges, administrators must take advantage of the decision-making tools already used in business and industry. This study investigated how these quantitative techniques could be applied to junior college problems. A survey of 195 California junior college administrators found that the problems…

To determine to what extent children of preschool age comprehend the meaning of logical connectives, 64 5- and 6-year-olds were told to hand differently colored and shaped wooden blocks to an experimenter. The commands involved various English idioms used for conjunction (e.g. both black and round), disjunction (either black or round), and…

This paper is essentially a critical survey of different theoretical approaches to child language in general and to child phonology in particular. The author states her own conviction that language acquisition is different from language retention, that language acquisition is a non-unique process consisting of a multiplicity of devices, that…

This paper presents the description and several applications of a model which can be used to determine how long a researcher must wait for the return of completed mail questionnaires to be sure the data collected reflect the true values of the parameters of interest. This model proposes to fit two linear time trend lines to a set of mailed…

Full details are presented on Phase I of the three-stage project "Design of Training Systems" (DOTS). A functional descriptive model of the current Naval Education and Training System (NETS) is provided, along with idealized concepts oriented toward a 1980 time frame. Technological gaps and problem areas are noted, but no organizational…

This study evaluates a project proposal prepared by a California school district. Using simple arithmetic and algebraic methods, the evaluators determined that the proposed individualized instruction system would be unsuccessful. A flowchart developed from the proposal visually depicts the weaknesses in the proposal for which appropriate…

This paper, a revision of the original document, "Correcting Partial, Multiple, and Canonical Correlations for Attenuation" (see TM 000 535), presents the formula for correcting coefficients of partial correlation for attenuation due to errors of measurement. In addition, the correction for attenuation formulas for multiple and cannonical…

Education and training systems are complex organizations of facilities, instructors, equipment, routines, and students. Because of this complexity, mathematical models can be used effectively to explain the behavior of educational systems and to assist in making decisions relative to better design and operation, and improved cost-effectiveness,…

A numerical procedure is outlined for obtaining an interval estimate of a parameter in an empirical Bayes estimation problem. The case where each observed value x has a binomial distribution, conditional on a parameter zeta, is the only case considered. For each x, the parameter estimated is the expected value of zeta given x. The main purpose is…