The goodness of fit of radioactive counting data with application to the data of the chlorine solar neutrino experiment

A procedure is given for determining the goodness of fit between an observed time series of events from radioactive decay and the model that is presumed to have produced these events. This procedure is applied to the data from the chlorine solar neutrino experiment at Homestake and it is found that the goodness of fit probability is high for both single experiments and for the entire data set. The spectrum of individual experiment production rates is then compared to the expected distribution based on the assumption of a constant production rate and good agreement is also found. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.