galaxies than do typical Local Group analogues in our samples.

In conclusion, we believe our most precise and robust estimate of the distribution of $A_{200}$ to be that obtained with our preferred morphology, isolation and radial velocity cuts for $150{{\rm \,km\,s^{-1}}}\le V_{max} <
300{{\rm \,km\,s^{-1}}}$, and we will use this distribution in the next section to estimate the true mass of the Local Group. Although the tails of the distribution are suppressed still further for a narrower range of $V_{max}$, this is at least in part due to the artificial effects mentioned above. In addition the number of Local Group analogues is too small in this case for the tails of the distribution to be reliably determined. From Table \[tb\_a200\_vra\] we see that the best estimate of the true mass of the Local Group (which we take to be that obtained using the median value of $A_{200}$) is almost identical to the direct TA estimate. The most probable range of true mass (given by the quartiles of $A_{200}$) extends to values about 30% above and below this, while the 95% confidence lower limit on the true mass (given by the 5% point of the $A_{200}$ distribution) is a factor of 