Final answer:
The statement 'Seventy-seven percent of consumers do not think small businesses should stay open on holidays' uses descriptive statistics, as it describes a characteristic of a sample without making inferences about a larger population. However, when survey results or hypotheses involve broader conclusions beyond the sample, it is a use of inferential statistics.
Step-by-step explanation:
The phrase 'Seventy-seven percent of consumers do not think small businesses should stay open on holidays' indicates that a specific percentage of a sample has been observed, which is a use of descriptive statistics. Descriptive statistics precisely describe the features of a particular dataset. Conversely, inferential statistics is used to make predictions or inferences about a population based on a sample of data.
Other examples provided indicate the use of descriptive statistics: '62 percent felt that it was not possible to go through the day without having data collected about them by companies' and '81 percent of people felt they had little control over the data collected by companies' are both descriptive as they summarize the data collected from the sample.
Regarding the survey conducted on six similar flights during a holiday weekend, the concern raised about non-representative results points toward issues with sampling methods which is a topic under inferential statistics. Similarly, interpreting survey results about men and women enjoying shopping, formulating a hypothesis about students attending a movie premiere, and testing the claim that a certain percentage of students do statistics homework indicate uses of inferential statistics where data from samples are used to make broader conclusions.