If you want to try your hand at making plots like this, but from your own models, check out https://dcc.ligo.org/LIGO-P2000217/public

The intrinsic population of binary black holes (in those plots above) is not the same as the *detected* population of binary black holes because LIGO/Virgo are not uniformly sensitive---higher mass black holes are easier to detect, for example.

How much easier? https://dcc.ligo.org/LIGO-P2000217/public lets you calculate it. We injected a very large number (millions!) of synthetic binary black hole signals into the LIGO/Virgo data stream and recovered them using the same pipelines we used to prepare GWTC-2.

By seeing how well the pipelines recover our injections in actual data, you can understand how to account for the variable sensitivity, and relate the *observed* population of binary black holes to the *detected* population of binary black holes.

To get started, check out the tutorial @ProjectJupyter notebook at https://dcc.ligo.org/LIGO-P2000217/public

Tagging @aussiastronomer, since she likes this sort of stuff---and just did something like it for planetary transit sensitivities!