(Ln(x))³

The everyday blog of Richard Bartle.

RSS feeds: v0.91; v1.0 (RDF); v2.0; Atom.

Previous entry. Next entry.

3:05pm on Thursday, 5th January, 2017:

DNA

Weird

A friend of mine has had his DNA tested by Ancestry, like me. Unlike me, however, he also had the DNA of his wife and two children tested, too. Here (with permission) are the ethnicity results:

Location	Father	Mother	Daughter	Son
Great Britain	37	31	37	24
Europe West	27		4	9
Ireland	25	63	46	47
Finland/NW Russia	6		1	1
Scandinavia	3	0.5	9	16
Italy/Greece	2		2
Europe East
Native American		0.5
European Jewish				0.5
Iberian Peninsula				0.5

The result for Scandinavia looks particularly suspect. Both children have far more Scandinavian DNA than their parents, with the son being something like a sixth Scandinavian. The ones for Ireland (ie. Celtic) are better, with the children on a par at just about the average of the parents.

As a result of this exercise, it's clear that the error bars on Ancestry's tests are pretty long when it comes to ethnicity. Fortunately, they're a lot better at identifying relatives, which is the main reason I used it myself.

Latest entries.

Archived entries.

About this blog.

Copyright © 2017 Richard Bartle (richard@mud.co.uk).