Testing Local Anisotropy Using the Method of Smoothed Residuals I -
  Methodology
  We discuss some details regarding the method of smoothed residuals, which has
recently been used to search for anisotropic signals in low-redshift distance
measurements (Supernovae). In this short note we focus on some details
regarding the implementation of the method, particularly the issue of
effectively detecting signals in data that are inhomogeneously distributed on
the sky. Using simulated data, we argue that the original method proposed in
Colin et al. [1] will not detect spurious signals due to incomplete sky
coverage, and that introducing additional Gaussian weighting to the statistic
as in [2] can hinder its ability to detect a signal. Issues related to the
width of the Gaussian smoothing are also discussed.
