Feature selection using firefly algorithm in software defect prediction

Defects occurring in software product are a universal event. Prevention of these defects in the early stage needs more attention because early stage prevention and fixing requires less effort and lower cost. Software defect prediction (SDP) is necessary in the determination of software quality as well as reliability. Prediction of defects is relatively an original research area in software quality engineering. Coverage of key predictors and the kind of data to be collected along with defect prediction model role, the interdependence of defects and predictors can be recognized in software quality. Feature selection (FS) is one of the worthy preprocessing techniques for application that uses huge volumes of data. It is the process of selecting the probable minimal attribute which is expected to be represented in the set of actual attributes. This paper proposes, FS using firefly algorithm (FA) and classifiers like support vector machine (SVM), Naïve Bayes (NB) as well as K-nearest neighbor (KNN) are used for classifying the features selected. The FS that make use of the FA is that new technique of evolutionary computation that has been inspired by the process of flash lighting of the fireflies. This can search quickly the feature space for an optimal or a near optimal feature subset for minimizing a certain function of fitness. This proposed fitness function has made use of the incorporation of both the accuracy of classification and the reduction of the size. The results of the experiment have shown that the FS using the FA can achieve a better accuracy of classification than that of the other methods.