  We present initial results for counts in cells statistics of the angular
distribution of galaxies in early data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
(SDSS). We analyze a rectangular stripe $2.5^\circ$ wide, covering
approximately 160 sq. degrees, containing over $10^6$ galaxies in the apparent
magnitude range $18 < r^\prime < 22$, with areas of bad seeing, contamination
from bright stars, ghosts, and high galactic extinction masked out. This survey
region, which forms part of the SDSS Early Data Release, is the same as that
for which two-point angular clustering statistics have recently been computed.
The third and fourth moments of the cell counts, $s_3$ (skewness) and $s_4$
(kurtosis), constitute the most accurate measurements to date of these
quantities (for $r^\prime < 21$) over angular scales $0.015^\circ-0.3^\circ$.
They display the approximate hierarchical scaling expected from non-linear
structure formation models and are in reasonable agreement with the predictions
of $\Lambda$-dominated cold dark matter models with galaxy biasing that
suppresses higher order correlations at small scales. The results are in
general consistent with previous measurements in the APM, EDSGC, and Deeprange
surveys. These results suggest that the SDSS imaging data are free of
systematics to a high degree and will therefore enable determination of the
skewness and kurtosis to 1% and less then 10%, as predicted by Colombi,
Szapudi, & Szalay (1998).
