Searcharxiv⌕ Search

arXiv subjects

Brendon J. Woodford

Publications and source records attributed to Brendon J. Woodford.

2 recordsLinked to original sources

Conformal Adversarial Generative Ensemble

Accurate time series forecasting is critical across various domains, yet traditional ensemble methods often suffer from the disproportionate influence of extreme forecasts. We introduce the Conformal Adversarial Generative Ensemble (CAGE), a novel framework that combines generative modeling, adversarial discrimination, and conformal prediction to enhance forecast reliability and accuracy. CAGE employs multiple generative models to produce initial forecasts, which are then evaluated by a discriminative component using conformal prediction techniques. P-values derived from nonconformity scores help dynamically adjust model weights, minimizing the impact of unreliable forecasts. This approach ensures that only the most credible predictions contribute to the final ensemble output. Our empirical and statistical analyses of time series data from New Zealand's milk collection and the global health data from the public owid-monkeypox dataset show that the CAGE outperforms traditional ensemble methods, especially in handling outliers and noisy data. By incorporating conformal prediction, CAGE delivers accurate and statistically rigorous forecasts, enhancing decision-making. We have demonstrated performance on two different datasets deliberately to showcase that the proposed method offers a versatile solution potentially applicable across finance, weather, and supply chain management.

cs.LG↗

Taking a Closer Look at Warnings Generated by PMD and SonarQube, their Rules and Compliance to Established Coding Standards

Context: Static code analysis (SCA) tools play a vital role in software development, reducing the cost and time required for code reviews. However, high false-positive and false-negative rates are reported for the best tools in the community. Accordingly, studies often aim to develop datasets for learning SCA warning patterns to reduce false results. These datasets are meant to possess high-quality and high-volume in covering the full range of faults/rules that typically result in false warnings and be compliant with established coding standards. However, existing studies have not utilised such datasets or identified the breadth of rules that are prone to false positives and their compliance to coding standards. Objectives: We analysed code from Stack Overflow and Apache Tomcat to capture variations in code length and style in detecting false-positive warnings from best-performing tools PMD and SonarQube, addressing this gap. Method: In deriving false-positive warnings, outcomes from the tools were labelled using established coding standards. Deeper analyses were then conducted to identify the rules that are prone to false-positives, reasons for these, and agreement/gaps between SCA rules and established standards. Results: Among our main outcomes, we observe that only a few SCA rules generate false positives, ranging from 4.64% to 18.45% across four datasets. Additionally, eliminating rules that contradict established standards significantly reduce the false-positive rate. Additionally, our findings reveal discrepancies between tools and established standards. Conclusion: Given the evidence established in this study, we recommend further investigations into gaps between tools and established standards, including the use of machine learning approaches to annotate larger datasets.

cs.SE↗