Revisiting Process versus Product Metrics: a Large Scale Analysis

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Majumder, Suvodeep, Mody, Pranav, Menzies, Tim
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2020
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author Majumder, Suvodeep
Mody, Pranav
Menzies, Tim
author_facet Majumder, Suvodeep
Mody, Pranav
Menzies, Tim
contents Numerous methods can build predictive models from software data. However, what methods and conclusions should we endorse as we move from analytics in-the-small (dealing with a handful of projects) to analytics in-the-large (dealing with hundreds of projects)? To answer this question, we recheck prior small-scale results (about process versus product metrics for defect prediction and the granularity of metrics) using 722,471 commits from 700 Github projects. We find that some analytics in-the-small conclusions still hold when scaling up to analytics in-the-large. For example, like prior work, we see that process metrics are better predictors for defects than product metrics (best process/product-based learners respectively achieve recalls of 98\%/44\% and AUCs of 95\%/54\%, median values). That said, we warn that it is unwise to trust metric importance results from analytics in-the-small studies since those change dramatically when moving to analytics in-the-large. Also, when reasoning in-the-large about hundreds of projects, it is better to use predictions from multiple models (since single model predictions can become confused and exhibit a high variance).
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2008_09569
institution arXiv
publishDate 2020
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Revisiting Process versus Product Metrics: a Large Scale Analysis
Majumder, Suvodeep
Mody, Pranav
Menzies, Tim
Software Engineering
Machine Learning
Numerous methods can build predictive models from software data. However, what methods and conclusions should we endorse as we move from analytics in-the-small (dealing with a handful of projects) to analytics in-the-large (dealing with hundreds of projects)? To answer this question, we recheck prior small-scale results (about process versus product metrics for defect prediction and the granularity of metrics) using 722,471 commits from 700 Github projects. We find that some analytics in-the-small conclusions still hold when scaling up to analytics in-the-large. For example, like prior work, we see that process metrics are better predictors for defects than product metrics (best process/product-based learners respectively achieve recalls of 98\%/44\% and AUCs of 95\%/54\%, median values). That said, we warn that it is unwise to trust metric importance results from analytics in-the-small studies since those change dramatically when moving to analytics in-the-large. Also, when reasoning in-the-large about hundreds of projects, it is better to use predictions from multiple models (since single model predictions can become confused and exhibit a high variance).
title Revisiting Process versus Product Metrics: a Large Scale Analysis
topic Software Engineering
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.09569