Genealogy Research and Education
This post follows on from my May 2018 analysis of the rate of growth of my DNA matches on Ancestry between July 2017 and May 2018. I took another snapshot of all my DNA matches in August 2018. I’m interested in capturing: THE RATE OF GROWTH OF MATCHES THE DISTRIBUTION OF MATCHES BY SHARED CM … Read more
For some of the posts on this blog I’ll be using one way to measure the similarity of two sample sets of data. The statistic is called the Jaccard Index, or the Jaccard Similarity Coefficient. This post is a technical explanation of the calculation itself. The sets of data are the unique ancestral surnames of … Read more
Something I find mildly disappointing with a new DNA match on Ancestry is when I realize that I’ve seen their tree before. The exact same identical tree. I’ll recognize this is the case if I’ve spent some considerable time studying the tree in a previous encounter from an earlier DNA match. What’s happening is that … Read more
In May 2018 I downloaded the direct line ancestral surnames of all my DNA matches at Ancestry. I discussed some statistical analysis on the numbers in a previous post. I then conducted some exploratory data mining of the distribution of surnames across my matches. My paternal line is African (not African-American), and I have very … Read more
Previously I discussed an analysis of the availability of trees across all my DNA matches. The headline figures from May 2018 were 40% of my matches had a public linked tree 27% had no linked tree but had at least one public unlinked tree 7% had a private tree 26% had no tree A total … Read more
In May 2018 I conducted a review of all my DNA matches on Ancestry and recorded whether the match had a public or private tree, and whether a tree was linked to their DNA. The headline numbers are: 40% of my matches have a public linked tree and 27% have at least one public unlinked … Read more
In July 2017 I reviewed all my DNA matches on AncestryDNA by recording the shared CM number of every match. I repeated the exercise in February 2018 and again in early May 2018. I was particularly interested in: (1) the rate of growth of matches over this 10 month period of heavy marketing by the … Read more
Ancestry introduced a new privacy policy in November 2017 that allowed customers to opt out of DNA matching. Customers who opt out receive their heritage breakdown, but do not see their DNA matches. They also are not shown on the match lists of all other customers. Prior to this change, customers who wished to disengage … Read more
This post is out of date, and does not reflect the current Ancestry website. There is a nicer quicker way of getting the count of Ancestry matches. Those of you who have been using Ancestry for a while will remember that once upon a time the display showed the total number of matches, but that … Read more
The number of people submitting DNA samples is rising, with a corresponding rise in the number of people on forums reporting that they have been asked by the test company to submit another sample. AncestryDNA say in their FAQ that: During the testing process, each DNA sample is held to a quality standard of at … Read more