By means of historical investigations, epistemological reflections, and didactical analysis with respect to the notion of independence, we shall try to provide insights into the problem of a theoretical term and its applications. This will be the starting-point for stating some didactical theses about treating the notion of independence in the curriculum of Sekundarstufe I (lower secondary level) and will yield examples of their realization. The difference between intuitive notion and mathematical definition reflects the insoluble tension between mathematics and reality. This should not be seen as a shortcoming, rather this tension has been one of the productive sources for the development of mathematics, and it ought to be the same for mathematics instruction.
The CAUSE Research Group is supported in part by a member initiative grant from the American Statistical Association’s Section on Statistics and Data Science Education