October 8, 1990

LEAD: A request from Mayor David N. Dinkins to his Police Commissioner two months ago seemed simple: Rather than just agreeing to hire 5,000 more police officers, as many crime-stung New Yorkers and politicians were demanding, why not survey the department to see what was really needed?

LEAD: Administrators at the University of Connecticut well remember the euphoria of Husky fever that swept through the campus and much of the state last spring as the men's basketball team clinched its first-ever Big East championship. It was just about the same time that the janitorial staff stopped cleaning most buildings because of state budget cutbacks.

LEAD: Israelis Get Gas Masks Israel's military began handing out the gas masks and chemical-warfare defense kits that it plans to distribute to each of Israel's 4.5 million citizens in the next two months. Page A6. Fiscal Huddle in New York Mayor David N. Dinkins and several of his top deputies and aides met at Gracie Mansion in hope of finding a way to articulate the city's deepening budget problems.

LEAD: Like Galileo's observation that the earth revolves around the sun, the A. C. Nielsen Company's report of an unexpectedly sharp drop in the national television audience last winter has altered the accepted view of reality. And like the telescope Galileo used, a new instrument - the ''people meter'' - provided the new information.

LEAD: Broadway's latest production opens today with no actors, no script and a $100 top ticket price. If all goes well, the audience will sit in silence for five hours watching two men brood at a table over action so subtle that most patrons will have to catch it on giant-screen monitors and wear earphones to hear piped-in experts explain it all.