IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information
Influence of Outliers on Estimation Accuracy of Software Development Effort
Summary :
When applying estimation methods, the issue of outliers is inevitable. The extent of their influence has not been clarified, though several studies have evaluated outlier elimination methods. It is unclear whether we should always be sensitive to outliers, whether outliers should always be removed before estimation, and what amount of precaution is required for collecting project data. Therefore, the goal of this study is to illustrate a guideline that suggests how sensitively we should handle outliers. In the analysis, we experimentally add outliers to three datasets, to analyze their influence. We modified the percentage of outliers, their extent (e.g., we varied the actual effort from 100 to 200 person-hours when the extent was 100%), the variables including outliers (e.g., adding outliers to function points or effort), and the locations of outliers in a dataset. Next, the effort was estimated using these datasets. We used multiple linear regression analysis and analogy based estimation to estimate the development effort. The experimental results indicate that the influence of outliers on the estimation accuracy is non-trivial when the extent or percentage of outliers is considerable (i.e., 100% and 20%, respectively). In contrast, their influence is negligible when the extent and percentage are small (i.e., 50% and 10%, respectively). Moreover, in some cases, the linear regression analysis was less affected by outliers than analogy based estimation.
- Publication
- IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information Vol.E104-D No.1 pp.91-105
- Publication Date
- 2021/01/01
- Publicized
- 2020/10/02
- Online ISSN
- 1745-1361
- DOI
- 10.1587/transinf.2020MPP0005
- Type of Manuscript
- Special Section PAPER (Special Section on Empirical Software Engineering)
- Category
Authors
Kenichi ONO
Nara Institute of Science and Technology
Masateru TSUNODA
Kindai University
Akito MONDEN
Okayama University
Kenichi MATSUMOTO
Nara Institute of Science and Technology
Keyword
Latest Issue
Copyrights notice of machine-translated contents
The copyright of the original papers published on this site belongs to IEICE. Unauthorized use of the original or translated papers is prohibited. See IEICE Provisions on Copyright for details.
Cite this
Copy
Kenichi ONO, Masateru TSUNODA, Akito MONDEN, Kenichi MATSUMOTO, "Influence of Outliers on Estimation Accuracy of Software Development Effort" in IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information,
vol. E104-D, no. 1, pp. 91-105, January 2021, doi: 10.1587/transinf.2020MPP0005.
Abstract: When applying estimation methods, the issue of outliers is inevitable. The extent of their influence has not been clarified, though several studies have evaluated outlier elimination methods. It is unclear whether we should always be sensitive to outliers, whether outliers should always be removed before estimation, and what amount of precaution is required for collecting project data. Therefore, the goal of this study is to illustrate a guideline that suggests how sensitively we should handle outliers. In the analysis, we experimentally add outliers to three datasets, to analyze their influence. We modified the percentage of outliers, their extent (e.g., we varied the actual effort from 100 to 200 person-hours when the extent was 100%), the variables including outliers (e.g., adding outliers to function points or effort), and the locations of outliers in a dataset. Next, the effort was estimated using these datasets. We used multiple linear regression analysis and analogy based estimation to estimate the development effort. The experimental results indicate that the influence of outliers on the estimation accuracy is non-trivial when the extent or percentage of outliers is considerable (i.e., 100% and 20%, respectively). In contrast, their influence is negligible when the extent and percentage are small (i.e., 50% and 10%, respectively). Moreover, in some cases, the linear regression analysis was less affected by outliers than analogy based estimation.
URL: https://global.ieice.org/en_transactions/information/10.1587/transinf.2020MPP0005/_p
Copy
@ARTICLE{e104-d_1_91,
author={Kenichi ONO, Masateru TSUNODA, Akito MONDEN, Kenichi MATSUMOTO, },
journal={IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information},
title={Influence of Outliers on Estimation Accuracy of Software Development Effort},
year={2021},
volume={E104-D},
number={1},
pages={91-105},
abstract={When applying estimation methods, the issue of outliers is inevitable. The extent of their influence has not been clarified, though several studies have evaluated outlier elimination methods. It is unclear whether we should always be sensitive to outliers, whether outliers should always be removed before estimation, and what amount of precaution is required for collecting project data. Therefore, the goal of this study is to illustrate a guideline that suggests how sensitively we should handle outliers. In the analysis, we experimentally add outliers to three datasets, to analyze their influence. We modified the percentage of outliers, their extent (e.g., we varied the actual effort from 100 to 200 person-hours when the extent was 100%), the variables including outliers (e.g., adding outliers to function points or effort), and the locations of outliers in a dataset. Next, the effort was estimated using these datasets. We used multiple linear regression analysis and analogy based estimation to estimate the development effort. The experimental results indicate that the influence of outliers on the estimation accuracy is non-trivial when the extent or percentage of outliers is considerable (i.e., 100% and 20%, respectively). In contrast, their influence is negligible when the extent and percentage are small (i.e., 50% and 10%, respectively). Moreover, in some cases, the linear regression analysis was less affected by outliers than analogy based estimation.},
keywords={},
doi={10.1587/transinf.2020MPP0005},
ISSN={1745-1361},
month={January},}
Copy
TY - JOUR
TI - Influence of Outliers on Estimation Accuracy of Software Development Effort
T2 - IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information
SP - 91
EP - 105
AU - Kenichi ONO
AU - Masateru TSUNODA
AU - Akito MONDEN
AU - Kenichi MATSUMOTO
PY - 2021
DO - 10.1587/transinf.2020MPP0005
JO - IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information
SN - 1745-1361
VL - E104-D
IS - 1
JA - IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information
Y1 - January 2021
AB - When applying estimation methods, the issue of outliers is inevitable. The extent of their influence has not been clarified, though several studies have evaluated outlier elimination methods. It is unclear whether we should always be sensitive to outliers, whether outliers should always be removed before estimation, and what amount of precaution is required for collecting project data. Therefore, the goal of this study is to illustrate a guideline that suggests how sensitively we should handle outliers. In the analysis, we experimentally add outliers to three datasets, to analyze their influence. We modified the percentage of outliers, their extent (e.g., we varied the actual effort from 100 to 200 person-hours when the extent was 100%), the variables including outliers (e.g., adding outliers to function points or effort), and the locations of outliers in a dataset. Next, the effort was estimated using these datasets. We used multiple linear regression analysis and analogy based estimation to estimate the development effort. The experimental results indicate that the influence of outliers on the estimation accuracy is non-trivial when the extent or percentage of outliers is considerable (i.e., 100% and 20%, respectively). In contrast, their influence is negligible when the extent and percentage are small (i.e., 50% and 10%, respectively). Moreover, in some cases, the linear regression analysis was less affected by outliers than analogy based estimation.
ER -
English
