I understand it matches DNA from their database, and helps you meet your blood relative, but for it to be completely accurate wouldn’t every person have to use the kit for the data to be up to date?
Also, how do people have varying percentages of nationalities? Shouldn’t DNA % be a fraction of 2 because it goes like 1/2 then 1/4th, 1/8th and so on (because we have 2 sets of biological parents)
In: Biology
I may be wrong, so don’t take this 100%, but I believe it’s 2 parts; 1 being DNA that they have from people using their kits, and 2 being legal records. So if your cousin did a DNA kit, it would show you you’re related to this person as a cousin, and the records of births, etc also show this is his dad, so your uncle, etc. That would, of course, leave room for inaccuracies considering lots of people who aren’t dads are recorded as dads, and things like that.
I’m terrible at math, so this may not even make sense, or be accurate, or answer your question, but when you go 8 generations back, a single person accounts for only 0.00390625% of your DNA, and you have 256 direct (great, great, great, etc) grandparents at that point. Let’s say 40 of those ancestors are Irish, 40 x 0.00390625 = 0.15625, so you’re 15.6% Irish. Then 37 German, 14.5%. 72 English, 28.1%. 12 Chinese, 4.7%. 53 Russian, 20.7%. And 42 Phillipino, 16.4%. If everyone reproduced in nice matching even numbers, 1 Irish for 1 Irish anywhere along the line, then I think you could always expect a fraction of 2, but considering that goes back a LONG way, and 8 generations is that tiny percentage, depending how far back you go, you could get virtually any percentages. Plus I’m sure they round them rather than listing 20.703125%, they’ll simplify that to 20.7%, so it’s not actually exactly precise.
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