The Woods Hole conference of September 1959 was outstanding of its kind as a meeting of about 35 people interested in education - educationists, psychologists, medical men, and mathematicians. The results of the meeting were summarised by J. S. Brunner in a chairman's Report, which, impregnated by his own ideas, evolved into his booklet The Process of Education. In the last decade this work has strongly influenced curriculum development, in particular, in mathematics. Brunner's contribution seems to me of a particular interest for the instruction in stochastics, which is now entering our schools. On the one hand advocates of this subject matter are advancing its fundamental (or central) ideas, on the other hand stress is laid on the importance to tie instruction in stochastics to intuitive experiences. Both points, however, are rarely elaborated or made more concrete. In particular the following questions deserve attention: (a) What would a list of fundamental ideas of stochastical concepts look like? (b) Why should intuition mean so much for stochastics? (c) What does "(stochastic) intuition" mean? (d) How does it develop, and how can it be improved? In the following we will advance some ideas on (a) and will also touch on the other points.
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