Implementation of a three-group classification model using case-based reasoning

Reliability is becoming a very important and competitive factor for software products. Software quality models based on software metrics provide a systematic and scientific way to detect software faults early and to improve software reliability. Classification models for software quality usually classify observations using two groups. This thesis presents a new algorithm for classification using three groups, i.e., Three-Group Classification Model using Case Based Reasoning. The basic idea behind the algorithm is that it uses the commonly used two-group classification method three times. This algorithm can be implemented with other techniques such as logistic regression, classification tree models, etc. This work compares its quality with the Discriminant Analysis method. We find that our new method performs much better than Discriminant Analysis. We also show that the addition of object-oriented software measures yielded a model that a practitioner may actually prefer over the simpler procedural measures model.