Corrigendum: The loudest event statistic: general formulation, properties and applications

The loudest event statistic, a method by which the rate at which events occur can be deduced from the significance of the most significant event (or loudest event), has been employed in several papers describing the search for gravitational waves produced by coalescing compact binaries in data from the LIGO and Virgo observatories. The paper ?The loudest event statistic: general formulation, properties and applications? (Biswas et al 2009 Class. Quantum Grav. 26 175009) presents a general formulation of the loudest event statistic and addresses topics on the estimation of rate intervals, on combining multiple experiments, and on marginalizing over uncertainties in parameters. A conceptual error in section 5 of Biswas et al (2009) led to invalid results regarding the marginalization over uncertainties in the averaged detection efficiency; specifically its equations (23) and (24) are incorrect, as are its equations (25) and (27). This corrigendum presents a correct treatment of the marginalization of uncertainties in the estimated detection efficiency.