A sociologist wants to estimate the average age at marriage for women in New England in the early eighteenth century. She finds within her state archives marriage records for a large Puritan village for the years 1700–1730. She then takes a sample of those records, noting the age of the bride for each. The average age in the sample is 24.1 years. Using a statistical method from Chapter 5, the sociologist estimates the average age of brides at marriage for the population to be between 23.5 and 24.7 years.

(a) What part of this example is descriptive?

(b) What part of this example is inferential?

(c) To what population does the inference refer?