The MCMC Procedure

PROC MCMC Compared with Other SAS Procedures

PROC MCMC is unlike most other SAS/STAT procedures in that the nature of the statistical inference is Bayesian. You specify prior distributions for the parameters with PRIOR statements and the likelihood function for the data with MODEL statements. PROC MCMC derives inferences from simulation rather than through analytic or numerical methods. You should expect slightly different answers from each run for the same problem, unless the same random number seed is used. The model specification is similar to PROC NLIN, and PROC MCMC shares some of the syntax of PROC NLMIXED.

You can also carry out a Bayesian analysis with the BCHOICE, GENMOD, PHREG, LIFEREG, and FMM procedures for discrete choice models, generalized linear models, accelerated life failure models, Cox regression models, piecewise constant baseline hazard models (also known as piecewise exponential models), and finite mixture models. See Chapter 27: The BCHOICE Procedure, Chapter 44: The GENMOD Procedure, Chapter 85: The PHREG Procedure, Chapter 69: The LIFEREG Procedure, and Chapter 39: The FMM Procedure.