Severity-based Software Quality Prediction using Class Imbalanced Data

Most fault prediction models have class imbalance problems because training data usually contains much more non-fault class modules than fault class ones. This imbalanced distribution makes it difficult for the models to learn the minor class module data. Data imbalance is much higher when severity-based fault prediction is used. This is because high severity fault modules is a smaller subset of the fault modules. In this paper, we propose severity-based models to solve these problems using the three sampling methods, Resample, SpreadSubSample and SMOTE. Empirical results show that Resample method has typical over-fit problems, and SpreadSubSample method cannot enhance the prediction performance of the models. Unlike two methods, SMOTE method shows good performance in terms of AUC and FNR values. Especially J48 decision tree model using SMOTE outperforms other prediction models.