Tuesday, December 20, 2016

AncestryDNA Update - December 2016

It appears that AncestryDNA has changed their presentation of the results, but has not changed the content.

When I looked at my AncestryDNA results today, I saw a changed screen (two images below):


There are four major areas on the screens above:

1)   The Ethnicity Estimates - these haven't changed for awhile - I'm still 66% Western Europe, 18% Ireland and 9% Great Britain (two images below):


I still think that these AncestryDNA Ethnicity Estimates are incorrect based on comparing them with my FamilyTreeDNA and 23andMe ethnicity estimates and with my known ancestry (roughly 68% British Isles in the 1500s) based on genealogy research.

2)  The AncestryDNA Matches - these are with other AncestryDNA testers:

*   I have 155 with Shared Ancestry Hints (testers who have the same ancestor in their tree and, presumably, match my DNA in one or more specific chromosome segment)
*  I have 165 Starred Matches (I assign the star)
*  I have 333 4th cousins or closer (Ancestry's relationship estimate)
*  I have about 5,140 12,850 matches on Ancestry DNA (257 pages with 20  50 matches on each page) [UPDATED 21 December: thanks to Marietta who noticed my error!]

Unfortunately, when I made the image above, the Shared Ancestry Hints and associated information was unavailable.  See the message at the top of the image.  My guess is that this will be corrected today. [UPDATE 21 December:  The trees are still unavailable a day later]

3)  DNA Circles -- these are ancestors of mine that some of my matches share DNA with me (presumably on the same chromosome in the same segment):


These seven DNA Circles haven't changed much in the past months.

4)  New Ancestor Discoveries -- these are potential ancestors or descendants of potential ancestors based on DNA segment sharing and the DNA Circles of other testers.  I now have six NADs, I had 8 last week, and fewer several months ago.  I have never been able to use these to find a common ancestor with the others in the NAD circles.

I continue to think that AncestryDNA really needs a chromosome browser, although many persons have downloaded their raw DNA file from all three testing services and uploaded the raw DNA data to GEDMatch, which is FREE.

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Copyright (c) 2016, Randall J. Seaver

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4 comments:

MHD said...

Good post, as always, Randy. But I'm no confident at all about the fix coming today. I've been getting that notice and problems at least this bad for a month now. I've even called in....

Marie Cooke Beckman said...

I am also not very confident about the fix coming today. I've had issues with shared matches tab not appearing and the matches page never finishing loading after clicking on it in the Listing of Matches.

I did notice that today they have the 3 Tabs loading in the same table with the Matches' Tree section. I haven't had a problem with the 3 Tabs loading since they've done that.

Now if we could just get a search function that works consistently to find the match we are looking for among the around 26000(50 x 520) that match me. It is maddening trying to search for matches with colonial lines. --MarieB

Lynn David said...

I would love to see a chromosome browser as well.

As much as you would like to eschew your placement by AncestryDNA in the Western European sphere, I would like to eschew my placement by AncestryDNA in their Great Britain sphere. I have all my ancestors back across the pond and most to at least the early 1700s. Not a one came from the British Isles. And yet AncestryDNA has me listed as 45% British. My father would have been fighting mad if he had seen that.

It would have been interesting to have gotten the DNA profile of my father and mother and seen if where AncestryDNA would have placed them. My mother was near 50% Belgian Wallon (some marriage from beyond in Picardy and the Ardenne). My father was 50% northernwestern German (Saxon). Thus my mother represents certain peoples, Belgae and others Celts, who settled England over 2000 years ago and my father represents peoples, Saxons, who displaced the Romans in Britain about 1500 years ago. Separately, I wonder if they would have been listed as being "British" but their son, who only came about in America has been given such an appellation.

I once had this to say on the Ancestry Blog: Ancestry groups my heritage as being 45% British, 25% Western European, 14% Eastern European, 14% Trace Regions and 2% (West) Asian. But the thing is, I don’t have a one ancestor from the British Isles (most all my lines go back at least 3 generations in Europe – the exception being in Poland). I am, however by known ancestral regions, about 25% NW German (Saxon), 25% Wallon Belgian, 37% West-central European (from Lorraine, Baden, Franche-Comte, & Jura in Suisse) and 13% Eastern European (western Poland). I came to the conclusion that to get that rating from Ancestry of 45% British (and 4% Scandinavian & 1% Irish from the Trace Regions) that it had to come from my ancestors from northwestern Germany and my Belgian Walloons.

I think that there should be some way of allowing the user to comment upon AncestryDNA's Ethnicity Estimates. Maybe if they would listen to their customers in this respect they might be able to better fine-tune those estimates. I'm certainly tired of being called British, when I am not. And explaining to extraneous DNA matches why they cannot find a common English ancestor between themselves and me.

dixonlisa said...

Excellent post. My Dad and I both just did the Ancestry DNA test on Monday and mailed away the DNA test. So I am excited to get my results.

Dixon Family Genealogy Blog
http://dixonfamilygenealogy.blogspot.ca/