Population properties of black holes and neutron stars: the emerging picture from gravitational-wave astronomy

Gravitational-wave astronomy provides a new perspective of the Universe, allowing us to 'listen' to some of the most violent events: collisions between black holes and neutron stars. We can extract the properties of these compact objects, such as their masses and spins, from the gravitational-wave signal. With over 90 of these events, we can ask questions about the overall properties of the population and investigate the lives of these binaries. In this thesis, I study the population properties of merging black holes and neutron stars to probe the formation and evolution of these systems.