>and then choose the solution with the >shortest number of terms or something
Experience says that one should not assume that there is a one to one relationship, ("the" solution). Some event can trigger more than one combination of the 6 binary input variables. And experience says that the business users are not aware of all of the possible outcomes or that there may be some one-to-many relationships, which may be why they want the computer to do it. This is a problem that occurs everywhere. There are various decision table techniques, but good algorithms seem to be in short supply. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list