the internal combustion engine depending on the determined cylinder specific characteristic toothing time wherein the amount of energy released is indirectly proportional to the determined cylinder specific characteristic toothing time the method described is based on the knowledge that the characteristic toothing time which is given by the geometric or pythagorean sum of each of the cylinder specific toothing time deviations determined for a working stroke of the selected cylinder is a direct measure of the amount of energy released in a working stroke of the selected cylinder this means that the toothing time defined here is equivalent to the respective amount of energy released hence an absolute value for the amount of energy released in the working stroke of the respective cylinder is not determined with the method described here but only a relative value is determined however a proportionality factor between said relative value and the respective absolute amount of energy is the same for all cylinders so that the relative values for different cylinders can be set in relation to each other and thereby important information about the operating state of the internal combustion engine and especially about the torque contributions of the individual cylinders can be obtained in comparison to known methods the method described here has the advantage that only a geometric sum has to be calculated and that thus no mathematically rather complex fourier analysis of the toothing times associated with each working stroke of a selected cylinder of the internal combustion engine has to be carried out furthermore the method described here is suitable both for gasoline engines and also for diesel engines that are four stroke internal combustion engines it is noted that the amount of energy released and thus also.