Dear community,
I am new to Bayesian modeling and am currently working my way through the “Bayesian Analysis with Python - Third Edition” book. As being a Data Scientist in a travel company busy with marketing analytics, my main motivation behind going into this issue is Marketing Mix Modeling. So i came upon pymc-marketing and its mmm. This somehow promises to make life easier even for people who do not have years of experience in Bayesian modeling and PyMC.
A few days ago, I watched the “Qonto’s Path to MMM with PyMC” session in the PyMC Labs YouTube channel, which made me doubt a little bit. They are talking about steep learning curves and about months of work (at least) to get a reasonable model done. Also, they switched from using pymc-marketing to building up their model with PyMC on their own.
My imagination was that after understanding the basics of Bayesian modeling and PyMC, there should be a satifying solution possible with pymc-marketing, just as I am used to build up quite predictive models using Gradient Boosted Machines for different kinds of problems in the non-Bayesian data science world. After hearing the Qonto talk, this imagination now sounds a little naive to myself.
Also, I have a feeling that it is much harder and more expensive to find good learning resources to enter the Bayesian world. While there are tons of online courses and books giving you even deeper insights into different kinds of models in the Machine Learning world, you don’t find any high quality online course about PyMC and advanced Bayesian modeling based on it on the usual platforms. Instead, comparable online courses cost > 10k €, which is quite difficult to explain to the management who has to pay it.
After having this thougts, I am now in doubt if I am on the right track. I would of course like to add Bayesian modeling to the tool box of our small team, but the team is indeed small and our resources are limited in both time and money.
I would like to have some honest feedback if in this situation, it might be more reasonable to rely on easier or more established / documented kinds of models, which do not have such steep learning curves and need larger investments in learning and consulting. After all, PyMC labs is a consulting company and has their own interests, and the pymc-markeing stuff might from some perspective look like a sort of bait which seems to make life easy, but after starting with it I find myself with an uncomplete and unsatisfying model and will not be able to succeed with it in a reasonable amount of time and without buying lots of consulting.
I hope its ok to share this kind of thoughts and doubts and appreciate any honest feedback.
Best regards
Matthias