Machine Learning for Software Analysis: Models, Methods, and Applications.

Machine Learning (ML) is the discipline that studies methods for automatically inferring models from data. Machine learning has been successfully applied in many areas of software engineering including: behaviour extraction, testing and bug fixing. Many more applications are yet to be defined. Therefore, a better fundamental understanding of ML methods, their assumptions and guarantees can help to identify and adopt appropriate ML technology for new applications. In this chapter, we present an introductory survey of ML applications in software engineering, classified in terms of the models they produce and the learning methods they use. We argue that the optimal choice of an ML method for a particular application should be guided by the type of models one seeks to infer. We describe some important principles of ML, give an overview of some key methods, and present examples of areas of software engineering benefiting from ML. We also discuss the open challenges for reaching the full potential of ML for software engineering and how ML can benefit from software engineering methods.