Abstract: An algorithm for improving the probability of identifying the repair that will correct a fault aboard a machine, such as a locomotive. The invention utilizes historical fault log and repair data and further calculates the number of times a particular fault occurs in a given number of days and also the number of times a particular fault occurs on each day. Averages are calculated for these results and when the number of fault occurrences exceed some or more of those averages, then these faults are deemed statistically significant for subsequent processing.