There is a big misunderstanding for some if not MOST people when it comes to genetic calculators like those on GEDmatch.

Many people assume that just because you have a certain population at the top of your population comparison, that that would mean that you belong to that ethnicity. This is however totally FALSE!

Let me give you an example. Let's say you are an ethnic greek and you run a K3 calculator with the components called "European" "Middle eastern" and "North African." Now the average Greek would get something like this: European - 80%, Middleastern-19% and North African - 1%.

Your results look like this when you run the calculator: European -79%, Middle Eastern - 20% and North African-1%. The calculator will look for compositions of a certain ethnic group and see which ethnic group your COMPOSITION looks the closest to. In this case it would probably show you as having the closest genetic distance to Greeks because your COMPOSITION looks most similiar to the COMPOSITION of the average Greek and in this case the calculator would be right. HOWEVER let's say you are 100% Greek and your COMPOSITION looks like this European -90%, Middle Eastern - 10% and North African-0%, then the calculator might match you as having the closest genetic distance to let's say Bulgarians. BUT this DOES NOT MEAN THAT YOU ARE BULGARIAN BECAUSE OF THAT, it only means that your autosomal COMPOSITION looks the closests to that of BULGARIANS. So the calculator does not tell you that you are NOT Greek it only tells you that your AUTOSOMAL COMPOSITION looks the closest to that of a BULGARIAN.

Consider this case: A person is a mix of Middle Eastern,North african and North European. Now he run the same K3 calculator, the calculator gives him this results European - 80%, Middleastern-19% and North African - 1%, which looks exactly like that of a average Greek. Now the calculator WILL probably show Greek as the ethnicity with the closest population distance to that person, since his autosomal composition looks EXACTLY like that of the average Greek, but this does not mean that he is Greek! He is still a mix of Middle Eastern,North african and North European.

This mistake is made by many! The best CLUE is to look at the ethnicity of the majority of your genetic relatives, since these matches are based on true genetic matches, which matches shared genetic segments between people and this is the most accurate way to go that I know of! The genetic calculators merely guesses your ethnicity by comparing your autosomal composition with that of a certain populations autosomal composition and that's it. Sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't! It does NOT show you actual shared segments with a certain population, which is the most reliable and accurate way that I know of!