A feature dependent Naive Bayes approach and its application to the software defect prediction problem

Abstract

Naive Bayes is one of the most widely used algorithms in classification problems because of its simplicity, effectiveness, and robustness. It is suitable for many learning scenarios, such as image classification, fraud detection, web mining, and text classification. Naive Bayes is a probabilistic approach based on assumptions that features are independent of each other and that their weights are equally important. However, in practice, features may be interrelated. In that case, such assumptions may cause a dramatic decrease in performance. In this study, by following preprocessing steps, a Feature Dependent Naive Bayes (FDNB) classification method is proposed. Features are included for calculation as pairs to create dependence between one another. This method was applied to the software defect prediction problem and experiments were carried out using widely recognized NASA PROMISE data sets. The obtained results show that this new method is more successful than the standard Naive Bayes approach and that it has a competitive performance with other feature-weighting techniques. A further aim of this study is to demonstrate that to be reliable, a learning model must be constructed by using only training data, as otherwise misleading results arise from the use of the entire data set. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.