Treat the stated as the radius of a complete, volume-limited search, with uniform galaxy density . Its surveyed volume and number of galaxies are
The observing time is . One detection estimates
or one merger per approximately years per Milky-Way-type galaxy. The equivalent volume rate is about . The event's actual distance is not the survey radius and must not replace in the exposure.
A representative Galactic core-collapse supernova rate is about two per century, roughly times larger than this merger-rate estimate. The historical estimate was per century.[ref] The one-event Poisson uncertainty is large. Detector orientation, duty cycle, completeness and whether the quoted radius is an optimal horizon or an effective range also change the exposure; the boxed value is the specified simple-volume estimate.