The easy definition: Basically, the study of a bunch of people living together (human society), and the relationship between them and tax bills (organisations/ institutions/ governments). Social Sciences is broken down into many specific jobs, namely Economics, History. Geography and more. AKA as "soft science".
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The nerd definition: One of the three divisions of "Science", the other two being natural sciences and formal sciences. Social Scientists concern themselves with the human aspects of the world. As a result, social scientists try to explain human aspects in terms of graphs and numbers.
(Extended reading can be found under this sentence. You have been warned.)
This led to a common critique that it's much harder to perform repeatable, ethical experiments. See a "shocking" experiment performed by Yale University as well as this one for incidents.Scientists in general strive for a common rule that applies everywhere and the 'scientific method", but experiments have to take a back seat in social sciences because you can't really study, say, the US in miniature, because then it wouldn't be the US if it was in miniature. Of course, experiments is not the only way, but having models derived from a limited sets of data is often looked down, although this tendency creeps into a certain area of physics as well.
The only way to arrive at a ballpark figure would be to assume Ceteris Paribus. Of course, social scientists, and specifically Economists try to approach things from a method as closest as possible to what is considered "scientific". Steps like organizing and analyzing data given, finding any patterns that emerge, and then coming to a hypothesis and then testing it are taken.
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