A college dean wanted to find out which students were smarter: those seeking liberal arts degrees (like English or psychology) or those seeking professional degrees (like nursing, business, or engineering). From all the colleges in the United States, she picked 1,200 liberal arts majors and 1,000 professional degree majors. Each student took an IQ test and she calculated the average IQ for each group.

a. Is the group of 1,200 liberal arts majors a sample or a population?
b. If the college dean uses the averages in statements like, “The average intelligence of liberal arts students in the United States is 115.67,” is she treating the averages as statistics or as parameters?
c. If she uses the two averages to answer her question, is this an example of inferential statistics or descriptive statistics?