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My Ancestry DNA Results

They are in!  I was so excited when I received the email from Ancestry.ca that my DNA results were available to view.

As I mentioned in my first blog (you can check that out here), I had a very good idea of where my ancestors immigrated from on my Dad's side of the family but did not know very much about where my ancestors came from on my Mother's side.

I clicked on the email with excitement!

My genetic ethnicity results indicated 93% Europe and 7% West Asia




Europe West (This corroborates my Dad's research)

Italy/Greece

Europe East

Great Britain (This one indicated that it was a low confidence region)

Caucasus and Middle East (Both of these were also indicated as a low confidence region)

First off - what is a low confidence region? Taken directly from Ancestry.ca - To calculate your ethnicity, we run 40 separate tests on randomly selected portions of your DNA. The bottom number in a range is the smallest amount of an ethnicity that appeared during the 40 analyses, and the top number in a range is the largest amount of an ethnicity that appeared.

When an ethnicity has a range that includes zero (meaning that in at least one of the 40 tests, that ethnicity didn’t appear) and doesn’t exceed 15%, or when the predicted percentage is less than 4.5%, the ethnicity is included in an estimate as a low confidence region.

The larger the amount of an ethnicity that appears in a test, the more confidence we’re able to attribute to our estimate of that ethnicity. Because low confidence regions are regions for which smaller amounts of evidence appears, our confidence in the percentage of DNA that comes from a low confidence region is necessarily low. 

For each of the above percentages, you can click on details to learn more about the region and the people/history.  I found this part of the results very interesting.

The next part of the results are your DNA matches (for privacy, I will not be showing any of the personal information on these)

Clicking on the 3 Shared Ancestor Hints, I found that the first person listed was my first cousin who I was already in contact with.  The second and third were 3rd and 4th cousins.

I took a look at the matches for my 3rd and 4th cousins, but didn't see anyone I didn't already have in my tree on my mother's side - which is what I was hoping for.

Would I recommend Ancestry.ca (or .com for those of you in the US)?
Yes, although I wish that the percentages they gave were broken down further.  As an example, the 20% Italy/Greece result would have been better if it indicated how much Italian and how much Greek.  As for the matches, It too would have been much better if they were allocated to the father's side and mother's side rather than having to go through each match to find the shared matches.

While I now have a good idea of where my Grandmother's and Grandfather's family immigrated from, I was a bit disappointed that I was not able to find any further information on that side of the family.

I would definitely recommend it for anyone who knows little about their heritage and is looking to find out their genetic ancestry, but for someone like me who had all the information from my Dad's side of the family, but not my Mom's, I am not sure the price is worth it.

My rating: 4 out 5




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