  We present a careful frequentist analysis of one- and two-point statistics of
the hot and cold spots in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) data obtained
by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). Our main result is the
detection of a new anomaly at the 3-sigma level using temperature-weighted
extrema correlation functions. We obtain this result using a simple hypothesis
test which reduces the maximum risk of a false detection to the same level as
the claimed significance of the test. We further present a detailed study of
the robustness of our earlier claim (Larson and Wandelt 2004) under variations
in the noise model and in the resolution of the map. Free software which
implements our test is available online.
