Abstract
The article provides proof that the diagnostics of marine internal combustion engines and other ship power plant machines should take into account the randomness and unpredictability of certain events, such as wear, damage, the variations of mechanical and thermal loads, etc., which take place during machine operation. In the article, the energy E, like the other forms (methods) that it can be converted into (heat and work), is considered the random variable Et; at time t, this variable has the mean value