  We investigate the large scale anomalies in the angular distribution of the
cosmic microwave background radiation as measured by WMAP using several tests.
These tests, based on the multipole vector expansion, measure correlations
between the phases of the multipoles as expressed by the directions of the
multipole vectors and their associated normal planes. We have computed the
probability distribution functions for 46 such tests, for the multipoles l=2-5.
We confirm earlier findings that point to a high level of alignment between l=2
(quadrupole) and l=3 (octopole), but with our tests we do not find significant
planarity in the octopole. In addition, we have found other possible anomalies
in the alignment between the octopole and the l=4 (hexadecupole) components, as
well as in the planarity of l=4 and l=5. We introduce the notion of a total
likelihood to estimate the relevance of the low-multipoles tests of
non-gaussianity. We show that, as a result of these tests, the CMB maps which
are most widely used for cosmological analysis lie within the ~ 10% of randomly
generated maps with lowest likelihoods.
