  The mass distributions of dense cores in star-forming regions are measured to
have a shape similar to the initial mass function of stars. This has been
generally interpreted to mean that the constituent cores will form individual
stars or stellar systems at a nearly constant star formation efficiency. This
article presents a series of numerical experiments evolving distributions of
dense cores into stars to quantify the effects of stellar multiplicity, global
core fragmentation, and a varying star formation efficiency. We find that the
different evolutionary schemes have an overall small effect on the shape of the
resultant distribution of stars. Our results imply that at the current level of
observational accuracy the comparison between the mass functions of dense cores
and stars alone is insufficient to discern between different evolutionary
models. Observations over a wide range of mass scales including the high or
low-mass tails of these distributions have the largest potential for discerning
between different core evolutionary schemes.
