Ancestry Ethnicity Update and Matches from Other Ethnic Groups

[greerpalmer]

I'm interested to see how many of you have noticed a good number of matches with no ethnic overlap since the newest update. I can't help but feel the update oversimplified real ancestry particularly in Eastern Europe, if not Southern Europe as well.

My old results in bottom left.

[Nqp15hhu]

Not too many tbh.

[msmarjoribanks]

No, but most of my matches are mainly NW Europe.

I do notice that a huge number of my matches have not yet updated.

I have one mystery group of matches (no shared matches with anyone I have placed). The one that's most closely related to me (predicted 4th cousin) hasn't updated, so we only share Great Britain (she only has 8%) and Ireland/Scotland (she only has 2%), but it won't let me see what else she is (probably lots of Europe West).

[Donwulff]

In the update, my Finnish component increased by 27%. This is bizarre, as Finnish is so genetically distinct there should be no reason to suddenly find out you're 27% more Finnish. In the same update I lost all of my 20% Europe West, which again doesn't make sense as I know for a fact my grandmother was German. While I now Germany was a mix of various different ethnicities, in the new analysis I'm now 83% Finnish, 9% Swedish, 3% Baltic states. This leaves only 5% contribution for my grandmother, who was apparently Russian/Portuguese; there results are also completely out of line with the ancestry analysis from all other companies. About only explanation that makes sense to me is that they used my sample to stand for Finnish ancestry in their reference set, despite my profile making it clear I'm Finnish/German. This would cause the algorithm to overfit my ancestry to Finnish at the expense of central European ancestry.

It's possible that other people who have been used in the reference panel are seeing their results "oversimplified", but mine are certainly not physically possible.

[greerpalmer]

Do you see instances of matches that are almost completely Germanic?

[digital_noise]

Most of mine are sound matches, or at least seem to be. However I have a handful of 100% Ashkenazim matches and some random Russian and Romanian matches that make zero sense. She is 63% Eastern Euro and Russian and 32% Greece/Balkans. In reality I have small amounts of Greek and Balkan but Ancestry's new algorithm is terrible and tries to whitewash everything so who knows why or how they are seeing this match.

[Baltimore1937]

I have an interesting match to a lady with almost no ethnicities in common except Baltic States. I have 2%, and she has one percent Balt. Most of her ethnicity is Iranian, Turk, Sardinian, Eastern Europe. I have no clue where my Balt comes from, unless it is mixed in with German.