How accurate is GEDmatch Oracle?

**reboun** · 06-20-2021, 03:31 PM

Oracle option of GEDmatch helps us to see the distance of kits to certain ethnicities' DNA and I have some question related to GEDmatch Oracle:

How accurate is GEDmatch Oracle?
How is GEDmatch Oracle database formed?
How do they collect samples?
How many samples are collected for each ethnicity?
How can they be sure that the collected samples do not belong to a person who has immigrant background (like me)?

**reboun** · 06-20-2021, 10:00 PM

bump

**Dr_Maul** · 06-20-2021, 10:38 PM

I think it depends on the calculator and region of the world
From what I know, it seems quite accurate for basically all of mainland Europe and has constantly updated averages (on vahaduo at least) with large sample sizes. West Asia, Africa, East Asia is another story, and a lot of those averages seem very half-assed and not really making sense. G25 is probably more accurate globally.

**~~JamesBond007~~** · 06-20-2021, 10:51 PM

Originally Posted by aruncaz

Oracle option of GEDmatch helps us to see the distance of kits to certain ethnicities' DNA and I have some question related to GEDmatch Oracle:

How accurate is GEDmatch Oracle?
How is GEDmatch Oracle database formed?
How do they collect samples?
How many samples are collected for each ethnicity?
How can they be sure that the collected samples do not belong to a person who has immigrant background (like me)?

Pickrell notes that Dodecad and Eurogenes use cutting-edge techniques and open-source software developed by geneticists studying population history. The methods — which involve modelling past mixing between populations and distilling vast quantities of genotype data — still stir debate in the peer-reviewed literature because they can be difficult to interpret unambiguously, says John Novembre, a population geneticist at the University of California, Los Angeles. Behar, whose data on Jewish ancestry have been used by both projects, cautions that the techniques are more robust when applied to the history of an ethnic group, rather than the ancestry of an individual.

https://www.nature.com/articles/468880a

**~~JamesBond007~~** · 06-20-2021, 10:54 PM

John Novembre worked on an Open source genetics project with UCLA which placed me in Southern England so based on that I use GEDmatch calculators which conform to the academic results e.g. Eurogenes K15 for me. I realize this may not be a helpful reply in general.