following a learning path from descriptive to inferential statistics, it provides students with exercises, solutions and additional explanation. the book contains exercises from sociology, political sciences and communication studies. most exercises are based on real-life events from the news and on data from recent surveys, which makes the book hands-on and more enjoyable for students. statistics for the social sciences is well-suited for introductory courses in statistics, covering both descriptive and inferential statistics of categorical and metric variables and their bivariate associations.