Many researchers and organizations are interested in creating a mechanism capable of automatically predicting software defects. In the last years, machine learning techniques have been used in several researches with this goal. Many recent researches use data originated from NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) IV&V (Independent Verification & Validation) Facility Metrics Data Program (MDP). We have recently applied a constructive neural network (RBF-DDA) for this task, yet MLP neural networks were not investigated using these data. We have observed that these data sets contain inconsistent patterns, that is, patterns with the same input vector belonging to different classes. This paper has two main objectives, (i) to propose a modified version of RBF-DDA, named RBF-eDDA (RBF trained with enhanced Dynamic Decay Adjustment algorithm), which tackles inconsistent patterns, and (ii) to compare RBF-eDDA and MLP neural networks in software defects prediction. The simulations reported in this paper show that RBF-eDDA is able to correctly handle inconsistent patterns and that it obtains results comparable to those of MLP in the NASA data sets.
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Bezerra, M.E.R., Oliveira, A.L.I., Adeodato, P.J.L., Meira, S.R.L. (2008). Enhancing RBF-DDA Algorithm’s Robustness: Neural Networks Applied to Prediction of Fault-Prone Software Modules. In: Bramer, M. (eds) Artificial Intelligence in Theory and Practice II. IFIP AI 2008. IFIP – The International Federation for Information Processing, vol 276. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-09695-7_12
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