With an emphasis on description, examples, graphs and displays rather than statistical formulae, this book is the ideal introductory guide for students across the social sciences. It shows how all students can understand the basic ideas of statistics at a level appropriate with being a good social scientist. The authors explain the right ways to present data, how to describe a set of data using summary statistics and how to infer what is going on in a population when all you have to go on is the sample. The book uses small data sets to help students understand the basic principles, and no mathematics or statistical background is assumed.