Principal component based support vector machine (PC-SVM): a hybrid technique for software defect detection

Defects are the major problems in the current situation and predicting them is also a difficult task. Researchers and scientists have developed many software defects prediction techniques to overcome this very helpful issue. But to some extend there is a need for an algorithm/method to predict defects with more accuracy, reduce time and space complexities. All the previous research conducted on the data without feature reduction lead to the curse of dimensionality. We brought up a machine learning hybrid approach by combining Principal component Analysis (PCA) and Support vector machines (SVM) to overcome the ongoing problem. We have employed PROMISE (CM1: 344 observations, KC1: 2109 observations) data from the directory of NASA to conduct our research. We split the dataset into training (CM1: 240 observations, KC1: 1476 observations) dataset and testing (CM1: 104 observations, KC1: 633 observations) datasets. Using PCA, we find the principal components for feature optimization which reduce the time complexity. Then, we applied SVM for classification due to very native qualities over traditional and conventional methods. We also employed the GridSearchCV method for hyperparameter tuning. In the proposed hybrid model we have found better accuracy (CM1: 95.2%, KC1: 86.6%) than other methods. The proposed model also presents higher evaluation in the terms of other criteria. As a limitation, the only problem with SVM is there is no probabilistic explanation for classification which may very rigid towards classifications. In the future, some other method may also introduce which can overcome this limitation and keep a soft probabilistic based margin for classification on the optimal hyperplane.