ABSTRACT
In the course of the first part of this work, we have studied the reactions of the child faced with physical situations in which he is led, as in daily experience, to construct an idea of chance. In this second part of the work we have given ourselves the task of analyzing how the subjects’ reactions are related to chance in an activity such as random drawings. The reactions to physical chance as well as to the actions of random drawing of lots have shown us the existence of two conditions essential for the development of probabilistic notions. On the one hand, as we have just seen, this progress of the interpretation of chance depends on the child’s capacity to construct the combinatoric operations (combinations, permutations, and arrangements). On the other hand, the progress supposes the gradual ability to establish a relationship between the individual cases and the whole distribution; this ability to establish relationships requires logical and arithmetical operations in general, thus an operative quantification. It is now, therefore, a question of studying the mechanism of this quantification which will assure the transition between all the preceding chapters (notably the last two) and the third part of this work which will be an analysis of the combinatoric operations.
