  The Minkowski functionals are a mathematical tool to quantify morphological
features of patterns. Some applications to the matter distribution in galaxy
catalogues and N-body simulations are reviewed, with an emphasis on the effects
of cosmic variance. The conclusions are that (i) the observed large-scale
morphology is sensitive to cosmic variance on scales much larger than the
nonlinear length (approx. 8 Mpc/h), and (ii) the large-scale morphology
predicted by simulations is thus affected by finite-size effects, but
nonetheless a Lambda-CDM model is favored.
