The flux of atmospheric neutrinos is considerably smaller than that of the solar neutrinos, but because the reaction cross sections increase with energy they are detectable in a detector of Kamiokande-II's size. The experiment used a "ratio of ratios" to compare the ratio of electron to muon flavor neutrinos to the ratio predicted by theory (this technique is used because many systematic errors cancel each other out). This ratio indicated a deficit of muon neutrinos, but the detector was not large enough to obtain the statistics necessary to call the result a discovery. This result came to be known as the atmospheric neutrino deficit.