>From my perspective, and that of those around me geographically who I know have also taken an atDNA test, I have to disagree. For two reasons. First, we're on the east coast and many of our lines have been here since the 1600s (southern US, but I'm sure the same is true for many north of us as well) so we know the chances are slim that we're going to find that 9th+ cousin in the UK who ties us to our immigrant ancestor. Second, at least for me, I have MANY female lines that I cannot identify. I am completely jealous of those who have had such great luck in ID'ing 17th and 18th century female lines. I'm hoping this testing will connect me to someone who either has the answers or that will allow me to make the connections on my own at some point in the future. Of those lines of mine that are more recent that are immigrants (say from the 1750s onwards) that are non-English, ie. German or Swiss, I have no desire to trace them any further back in Germany or Switzerland simply because I don't want to try to decipher 18th century Germany (I can read it) or try to translate whatever amalgamation of French, German, Italian or Latin was spoken in Switzerland in 1750. This leaves me with only two 5th great grandparents who were probably Irish immigrants in the early 1800s that I would be moderately interested in identifying. I'd be more inclined if their last name wasn't so common in Ireland: both were Camerons and neither was related to the other. On Wed, May 16, 2012 at 6:55 AM, Diana Gale Matthiesen <[email protected]>wrote: > I think you can't assume the autosomal databases are representative > samples of the U.S. population, much less the global population. My > impression is that the majority of people using DNA testing services > to aid their genealogy are Americans searching for their European > roots. > > Europeans still living in Europe don't need to search because they > already know where they're from, and recent immigrants don't need to > search because they still remember where they're from. We are mostly > sampling from limited populations of European emigrants, populations > that severely bottle-necked in the 17th, 18th, and 19th Centuries. > > I wish I could remember the quote, but I think it was from Gary Boyd > Roberts, to the effect that tens of millions of Americans can trace > their ancestry to a core group of about 600 early immigrants to New > England. I've no doubt there's are similar groups of key progenitors > in other colonial populations. In Roberts's book on the genealogy of > Princess Diana, he estimates that she has 20 million American cousins > through her American great-grandmother, Frances (WORK) BURKE-ROCHE. > > I think it's no surprise that we are finding more connections than you > would expect from a database that's a random sample of the global > population, or even the U.S. population, because it isn't a random > sample, much less a representative sample, it's a highly biased > sample. > > Diana > > > > > From: Ann Turner > > Sent: Tuesday, May 15, 2012 1:49 PM > > > <snip> > > > > I have got to think more about the statistics here. Obviously we are > > going > > to hear a disproportionate number of success stories, just because > > they're > > so much fun. But it strikes me that we are hearing too many stories > > for the > > one-in-a-million number to hold true. I have a 2nd cousin once > > removed at > > 23andMe who tested because his daughter worked at Illumina and got a > > free > > kit. I tested a known cousin at FTDNA, and when she got her results > > back, > > she recognized the name of a 3rd cousin once removed from another > > side of > > her family. > <snip> > > > > > ______________________________ > For answers to Frequently Asked Questions about mailing lists, please see: > http://dgmweb.net/MailingListFAQs.html > > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without > the quotes in the subject and the body of the message >