A Metropolis–Hastings routine for estimating parameters from compact binary inspiral events with laser interferometric gravitational radiation data

Presented here are the results of a Metropolis–Hastings Markov chain Monte Carlo routine applied to the problem of determining parameters for coalescing binary systems observed with laser interferometric detectors. The Metropolis–Hastings routine is described in detail, and examples show that signals may be detected and analysed from within noisy data. Using the Bayesian framework of statistical inference, posterior distributions for the parameters of the binary system are derived using our routine.