Improving classifier-based effort-aware software defect prediction by reducing ranking errors

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Guo, Yuchen, Shepperd, Martin, Li, Ning
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2024
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author Guo, Yuchen
Shepperd, Martin
Li, Ning
author_facet Guo, Yuchen
Shepperd, Martin
Li, Ning
contents Context: Software defect prediction utilizes historical data to direct software quality assurance resources to potentially problematic components. Effort-aware (EA) defect prediction prioritizes more bug-like components by taking cost-effectiveness into account. In other words, it is a ranking problem, however, existing ranking strategies based on classification, give limited consideration to ranking errors. Objective: Improve the performance of classifier-based EA ranking methods by focusing on ranking errors. Method: We propose a ranking score calculation strategy called EA-Z which sets a lower bound to avoid near-zero ranking errors. We investigate four primary EA ranking strategies with 16 classification learners, and conduct the experiments for EA-Z and the other four existing strategies. Results: Experimental results from 72 data sets show EA-Z is the best ranking score calculation strategy in terms of Recall@20% and Popt when considering all 16 learners. For particular learners, imbalanced ensemble learner UBag-svm and UBst-rf achieve top performance with EA-Z. Conclusion: Our study indicates the effectiveness of reducing ranking errors for classifier-based effort-aware defect prediction. We recommend using EA-Z with imbalanced ensemble learning.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2405_07604
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Improving classifier-based effort-aware software defect prediction by reducing ranking errors
Guo, Yuchen
Shepperd, Martin
Li, Ning
Software Engineering
D.2
Context: Software defect prediction utilizes historical data to direct software quality assurance resources to potentially problematic components. Effort-aware (EA) defect prediction prioritizes more bug-like components by taking cost-effectiveness into account. In other words, it is a ranking problem, however, existing ranking strategies based on classification, give limited consideration to ranking errors. Objective: Improve the performance of classifier-based EA ranking methods by focusing on ranking errors. Method: We propose a ranking score calculation strategy called EA-Z which sets a lower bound to avoid near-zero ranking errors. We investigate four primary EA ranking strategies with 16 classification learners, and conduct the experiments for EA-Z and the other four existing strategies. Results: Experimental results from 72 data sets show EA-Z is the best ranking score calculation strategy in terms of Recall@20% and Popt when considering all 16 learners. For particular learners, imbalanced ensemble learner UBag-svm and UBst-rf achieve top performance with EA-Z. Conclusion: Our study indicates the effectiveness of reducing ranking errors for classifier-based effort-aware defect prediction. We recommend using EA-Z with imbalanced ensemble learning.
title Improving classifier-based effort-aware software defect prediction by reducing ranking errors
topic Software Engineering
D.2
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.07604