When to Sweat the Small Stuff and How Much it Will Cost

Abstract: Focusing on gravitational waves from compact binaries as an example, I will discuss scaling relations for how much information is carried by individual events and which events in a catalog carry the bulk of the information. I will then analyze the expected cost of obtaining precision measurements with large catalogs and provide simple estimates for when it does (or does not) make sense to dig deep into the noise by analyzing low signal-to-noise ratio signals. Ambitious audience members who are not afraid of spoilers can find details in arXiv:2407.11693.