HIGHER-ORDER STATISTICS FROM THE EDINBURGH DURHAM SOUTHERN GALAXY CATALOG SURVEY .1. COUNTS IN CELLS

Counts in cells are used to analyze the higher order properties of the statistics of the Edinburgh/Durham Southern Galaxy Catalogue Survey ( EDSGC). The probability distribution is obtained from an equal area pr ojection source catalog with infinite oversampling over the range 0.01 5 degrees-2 degrees. The factorial moments of the resulting distributi on and the s(N)'s characterizing the non-Gaussian nature of the distri bution are extracted. These results are compared to previous results f rom the Automatic Plate Measuring Facility (APM) survey and to theoret ical results from perturbation theory. The deprojected three-dimension al values corresponding to the s(N)'s are also determined. We find tha t the three-dimensional values match the scaling relation for strongly nonlinear clustering found in N-body simulations remarkably well, whi ch suggests that the galaxies are reliable tracers of the underlying m ass distribution.