keywords used in docs instead of positional args

[nipnipj]

https://www.pymc-marketing.io/en/latest/notebooks/mmm/mmm_sensitivity_analysis.html#setting-the-scene-with-an-example-dataset

mmm.sensitivity.run_sweep(
    sweep_values=sweeps,
    var_input="channel_data",
    var_names="channel_contribution",
    extend_idata=True,
)

Results in

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: SensitivityAnalysis.run_sweep() got an unexpected keyword argument 'var_input'

[williambdean]

It and sweep_values seem to be positional only:

pymc-marketing/pymc_marketing/mmm/sensitivity_analysis.py

Lines 289 to 293 in eb2f846

	def run_sweep(
	self,
	var_input: str,
	sweep_values: np.ndarray,
	*,

Would you like to make the fix in the documentation, @nipnipj?

[nipnipj]

Sorry. I'm not that good with python. I understood what you said, I think.
Now I tried:

mmm.sensitivity.run_sweep('channel_data', sweeps, var_names = "channel_contribution")

Resulting in

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: SensitivityAnalysis.run_sweep() got multiple values for argument 'var_names'

[OriolAbril]

The asterisk in the function definition means the arguments after that are keyword only. That is, with the code on main there are two arguments that can be positional or keyword: var_input and sweep_values and several others that are keyword only. This means that if running the code from GitHub, both code snippets mention on this issue work:

mmm.sensitivity.run_sweep('channel_data', sweeps, var_names = "channel_contribution")

and

mmm.sensitivity.run_sweep(
    sweep_values=sweeps,
    var_input="channel_data",
    var_names="channel_contribution",
    extend_idata=True,
)

However, this code doesn't work on any PyPI release of pymc-marketing because run_sweep was refactored 3 weeks ago and the most recent release is 4 weeks old.

Before the refactor, there was no var_input argument anywhere and the first argument (which could be positional) was var_names which explains why both snippets fail on older versions.

---

Potential actions and solutions.

@nipnipj you'll want to check out the docs that match the PyMC-Marketing version you have installed. There is a version switcher at the bottom right of the website and the navbar has a version indicator on the navbar which can be dev (development version from GitHub) or the version number.

For us @williambdean @juanitorduz @cetagostini I think we should switch the default to stable instead of latest so when someone goes to https://www.pymc-marketing.io they end up at /en/stable/ instead of /en/latest/ which is a version that most users will probably never use until it is released.

Regarding the issue itself, the code does work, I don't think it is an issue per se but we might want to review how the deprecation happened regarding docs and warnings. Should a note be added to the docs for a couple versions about the recent deprecation? Can we make a patch release out of 0.17 to add a FutureWarning when var_names is used as a positional argument?

[cetagostini]

@OriolAbril agrees on the switch for stable instead of the latest.

Regarding this, we release the sensitivity in 0.16 and refactor 0.17 meaning, there was only one version, I think linking page should be enough. Given the fact that it was a single version, I don't think deprecation warnings or so should be needed. Was experimental, and consequently changed.

Probably adding a warning is still experimental.