Optimized fuzzy clustering‐based k‐nearest neighbors imputation for mixed missing data in software development effort estimation
Why this work is in the frame
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Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Context Software development effort estimation (SDEE) is one of the most challenging aspects in project management. The presence of missing data (MD) in software attributes makes SDEE even more complex. K‐nearest neighbors imputation (KNNI) has been widely used in SDEE to deal with the MD issue. However, KNNI, in its classical process, has low tolerance to imprecision and uncertainty especially when dealing with categorical features. When dealing with categorical attributes, KNNI uses a classical approach, employing mainly numbers or classical intervals to represent software attributes and similarity measures originally designed for numerical attributes. Objectives This paper evaluates the use of an optimized fuzzy clustering‐based KNNI (FC‐KNNI) and compares it with classical KNN when dealing with mixed data in the context of SDEE. Methods We investigate the effect of two imputation techniques (FC‐KNNI and KNNI) on five SDEE techniques: case‐based reasoning, fuzzy case‐based reasoning, support vector regression, multilayer perceptron, and reduced‐error pruning tree. The evaluation is carried out using six publicly available datasets for SDEE using two performance measures, standardized accuracy (SA), and Pred (0.25). The Wilcoxon statistical test is also performed to assess the significance of results. Results The results are promising in the sense that using an imputation technique designed for mixed data is better than reusing methods originally designed for numerical data. We found that FC‐KNNI significantly outperforms KNNI regardless of the SDEE technique and dataset used. Another important finding is that F‐CBR improved the analogy process compared to CBR. Conclusion The introduction of fuzzy sets and fuzzy clustering in the analogy process improves its performances in terms of SA and Pred (0.25).
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Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it