The population puzzle: preparing for an ever-increasing gravitational-wave catalog.*

The field of gravitational-wave astronomy is rapidly unfolding as the event catalog grows from O(10) to O(100). As we are moving from excitement about individual sources to a big-data era, increasingly detailed population properties can be inferred.

This brings us on the cusp of answering fundamental questions in physics and astronomy, ranging over topics as diverse as the life and death of stars to the properties of AGN disks.

To address such questions, we need to model the underlying population. In this overview talk, I will touch upon some of the hopes and dreams of population studies and discuss what is required to achieve these goals: Which questions can we hope to answer with the next crop of data from LVC, and which will need to wait for 3rd generation detectors?