Solutions to the End-of-Chapter Exercises
Fully worked solutions to every end-of-chapter exercise: the substitution, the intermediate value, the result, and what the result means. Download the complete set as one PDF, or take a single chapter.
Online Materials
These materials accompany Making Sense of Social Data, first edition. They are free to read and download and no purchase is required.
The Statistical Tables
The z, t, chi-square and F tables. These are not printed in the book — they live here, where you can reach them on whatever you have with you, and where a value is a search away rather than a page-flip.
The Datasets
All four datasets in CSV and R format, each shipped with a plain-text codebook so a downloaded file is never separated from the document that explains it. Includes the sampling pool — a small enough extract of the population to sample from by hand, with a random number table and a pencil.
The Dataset Tables
The datasets printed out in full, as tables. Appendix B of the book documents every variable and its permitted values; these are the rows themselves, for anyone who wants to read the data rather than load it. They run past sixty pages in print, which is why they are here.
Replication Code
The R scripts that generate every dataset, every table, and every figure in the book, together with the verification scripts that check them. Released under the same licence as the data, so you can build on them.
What is in the book, not here
If you are holding the book, you already have these. They are printed in full and there is no online copy, so that there is never any question about which version is current.
- Appendix A, the mathematics review. Order of operations, fractions, absolute value, exponents, summation, inequalities, rounding, and notation. It is a reference to look things up in, not something to read first.
- Appendix B, the datasets. What each dataset contains, how it was built, what it is for, and a codebook giving every variable, its type, and its permitted values. The documentation is in the book; the data files and the long tables of rows are here.
- The solutions to the exercises inside each section. Printed immediately after the exercises they answer, because an immediate answer is what makes a self-check a self-check. Only the end-of-chapter solutions are here.
- The glossary, the bibliography and the index. All three are things you reach for while reading, which is an argument for paper rather than against it.
Nothing here is a second copy of something in the book. Each item is published online instead of being printed, not as well — so there is never a question about which version is current, and no way for the two to drift apart.
Citing these materials
Include the edition. Materials differ between editions, and a citation without one cannot be followed to the right version.
Paradis, M. (2026). Solutions to end-of-chapter exercises. Online material for Making Sense of Social Data (1st ed.). https://www.markparadispolitics.com/books/making-sense-of-social-data/online/solutions/
Licence and reuse
The datasets and the R code are released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0) — use them, change them, redistribute them, including commercially, provided you credit the source. Suggested attribution: Mark Paradis, Making Sense of Social Data (2026).
The text of the solutions and of any written online material is © 2026 Mark Paradis, all rights reserved. You are welcome to link to it and to point students at it; please do not republish it.
Materials for earlier editions
There is only one edition so far. When a second appears, the first-edition materials will stay online permanently at their own addresses, so that anyone who cited them keeps a working link and any student working from an older printing gets the version that matches their book.
Found an error?
Corrections are welcome and get folded into the next revision. Send me a note with the page, the chapter and exercise number, and what is wrong. Known errata are listed on the errata page.