Drafting NFL quarterbacks. The Journal of Productivity Analysis (Vol. 35, 2011) published a study of how successful National Football League (NFL) teams are in drafting productive quarterbacks. Data were collected for all 331 quarterbacks drafted over a 38-year period. Several variables were measured for each QB, including draft position (one of the top 10 players picked, selection between picks 11–50, or selected after pick 50), NFL winning ratio (percentage of games won), and QB production score (higher scores indicate more productive QBs). The researchers discovered that draft position was only weakly related to a quarterback’s performance in the NFL. They concluded that “quarterbacks taken higher [in the draft] do not appear to perform any better.”

a. What is the experimental unit for this study?

b. Identify the type (quantitative or qualitative) of each variable measured.

c. Is the study an application of descriptive or inferential statistics? Explain.