My AncestryDNA Results

[calxpal]

I have a question I wanted to ask if anyone here has ever done a second test with Ancestry and if so how different were the results for you? What it worth it or better the 2nd time? I am considering doing a 2nd test by some means since I am not fully satisfied with my ethnicity results and disappointed with the vagueness and lack of detail/genetic groups. It's also because my parents won't take it and sadly my grandma can't anymore. Advice would be greatly appreciated please don't be rude though.

[Mr.G]

I have a question I wanted to ask if anyone here has ever done a second test with Ancestry and if so how different were the results for you? What it worth it or better the 2nd time? I am considering doing a 2nd test by some means since I am not fully satisfied with my ethnicity results and disappointed with the vagueness and lack of detail/genetic groups. It's also because my parents won't take it and sadly my grandma can't anymore. Advice would be greatly appreciated please don't be rude though.

I've never actually seen anyone's results who took it twice. As far as the data, maybe some slight variation is possible, with no-calls or some quality issue, but basically it should be identical. I think the question would be if their algorithm works like Vahaduo, where sometimes even with the same source and target, the result will wiggle back and forth a little with each calculation.

Regarding other aspects of your results, I think I have said before, I'd like to see them work on improving the sensitivity of the communities tool, or to keep growing/developing their samples within the established communities. I still can't fathom how my mom has 87.5% German ancestry, gets a German community -- but my sister and I do not? Yet I do get a Cornwall, England community -- curtesy of one 3x great-grandparent. Weird.

If you feel like it, I'd be curious to see how you would adjust your current percentages to improve your estimate?

[calxpal]

I've never actually seen anyone's results who took it twice. As far as the data, maybe some slight variation is possible, with no-calls or some quality issue, but basically it should be identical. I think the question would be if their algorithm works like Vahaduo, where sometimes even with the same source and target, the result will wiggle back and forth a little with each calculation.

Regarding other aspects of your results, I think I have said before, I'd like to see them work on improving the sensitivity of the communities tool, or to keep growing/developing their samples within the established communities. I still can't fathom how my mom has 87.5% German ancestry, gets a German community -- but my sister and I do not? Yet I do get a Cornwall, England community -- curtesy of one 3x great-grandparent. Weird.

If you feel like it, I'd be curious to see how you would adjust your current percentages to improve your estimate?

I'm curious about that as well I wonder how different the result variations would be for example if Ancestry provided different runs of your ethnicity estimate and not just one.

I agree yes the communities were my biggest let down. It would be cool if they offered a feature like "possibly applicable communities" based on the communities of relatives.

And yeah I admit it would likely be a waste of money to test twice and quite possibly there would not be a lot of change, it was just a curious idea.

Although I did hear news that they are planning on allowing uploads in the near future which is very exciting if true, I look forward to that very much and then I could do a quick and easy comparison with a different set of raw data and get family member results easily too. I will be keeping and eye out for this =)


I will say though that sometimes It's fun and interesting to receive different percentages on these tests than you expect than what you already had in mind from your background...and maybe I'm being whiny lol and they do have ranges.....but in terms of improving the accuracy I would adjust the current percentage by upping the Irish by at least 3x, reducing the Scottish by 1/3 or so to 20-25%, increasing the French to maybe 17-18%, getting rid of the 6% Sweden/Denmark, adding in around 3-6% Germanic Europe for my Dutch GG-Grandparent, add in at least 5% Balkan (although I think it may be absorbed into Eastern Europe, but it seems hard to believe I'd have absolutely none especially with my grandma's 23andme and the region her ancestors come from), and maybe add 1% or so Basque since I have multiple distant ancestors who came from the Basque region of France...although I believe they were not all ethnically Basque but I have French Canadian relatives on Ancestry scoring up to 25% so I think it would make sense. I would keep the other percentages I didn't mention unchanged. I would also adjust the chromosome painting as it looks odd with so many chromosomes painted only one whole color, at least for me I think. I would also want to see an improvement in consistency a little since I have a very small number of relatives on Ancestry that share zero ethnicities with me, I feel like they should share something if we are related.

But ofc I know some things complicate my prediction like random inheritance and people lying about their ethnicity possibly and reference populations too. I don't dislike my results though lol just confused by a few parts of it.

And I would also add back in trace ancestry instead of having it as "unassigned" because idk it makes me laugh to see the unassigned when the hack assigns it lol. And I think it makes sense hmmm.

But I also have an idea of which genetic groups I would add, I'm not going to bother naming all the exact regions though lol.

Anyways I'm curious to know your opinion and share your thoughts ofc =) I appreciate the comment! I'm really hoping that the next Ancestry update is a bigger one!

[calxpal]

I wanted to give a heads up to anyone with Ancestry results on here without a membership that they are going to be putting shared matches and ancestors in common/surnames and related features behind a membership paywall, there is a notice up under the shared matches and trees tab now. I would recommend looking through and screenshotting them now if you can, or saving them however. I am very unhappy about this, although I don't mean to upset any AncestryDNA fans on here. Please don't bring up 23andme on this thread either unless if it's related to my ancestry breakdown.

I think It's possible they'll be moving other things behind the paywall too, but I'm not sure ):.

[calxpal]

I wanted to alert people to the fact that it seems like there is minor but possible evidence to suggest that Ancestry database information could have been compromised. I have only seen a few people post about it anywhere on any website though as of now but It's something to be aware of, might want to double check that your account is secure. It may NOT have been compromised though, I could be totally wrong and sound like a borderline conspiracy theorist lol.

As an update it appears that emails used for ancestry were possibly sold to scammers.