Testing Isotropy in the Local Universe
  We test the isotropy of the local distribution of galaxies using the 2MASS
extended source catalogue. By decomposing the full sky survey into distinct
patches and using a combination of photometric and spectroscopic redshift data,
we use both parametric and non-parametric methods to obtain the shape of the
luminosity function in each patch. We use the shape of the luminosity function
to test the statistical isotropy of the underlying galaxy distribution. The
parametric estimator shows some evidence of a hemispherical asymmetry in the
north/south Galactic plane. However the non-parametric estimator exhibits no
significant anisotropy, with the galaxy distribution being consistent with the
assumption of isotropy in all regions considered. The parametric asymmetry is
attributed to the relatively poor fit of the functional form to the underlying
data. When using the non-parametric estimator, we do find a dipole in the shape
of the luminosity function, with maximal deviation from isotropy at galactic
coordinate $(b,l)=(30^{\circ},315^{\circ})$. However we can ascribe no strong
statistical significance to this observation.
