This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Author: ksaxe Surnames: McConnell, McConnel, MacConnell, McDonald Classification: queries Message Board URL: http://boards.rootsweb.com/surnames.mcconnell/2471/mb.ashx Message Board Post: Ready to try extracting some test results from the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation (SMGF) database? Here are some tips: 1)You can go directly to the Sorenson Y-database search page at http://www.smgf.org/ychromosome/search.jspx. 2)The first option on the search page is to choose a lab standard. For reasons that will become clear later, choose the FTDNA lab standard. 3)The second option on the search page is the search type. Choose the search by surname option and type "mcconnell" in the box. 4)You have to enter possible test values for comparison to do the search. The easiest way to get started is to click the "Default Values" button at the top of the Values section of the search page. SMGF has determined which allele values are most common for each marker in their database and those values will be entered in the appropriate boxes. NOTE: In some cases, people will have access to test results to use as clues. The person whose results they are trying to extract may have been tested outside SMGF, or they may have test results from a known or suspected male line relative. They would enter those test results at this point, because it might save them a lot of work. Example: John and David McConnell suspect that they are cousins, but they haven't been able to prove it. David has test results from FTDNA, and some of John's Sorenson test results have just been added to the Sorenson database. John would enter David's test results into the search boxes, and they would prob! ably match on more markers than the default values would. If John and David mismatch on more than a few markers, John would then try using the "Default Values" button, first noting the matches that he did find with David's results, and then altering any default values to match on the markers that match for John and David before hitting the search button. 5)You're ready to hit that search button. The default values match the tested allele values for the 2 McConnells on about two thirds of the markers for each man. You may want to print out the results page, write down the values, or open another window in your browser and repeat the default values search so that you can have the 25 or so matching values handy. 6)The project results tables already have results posted for 17 McConnells, and they fall on just 5 of the tables. Test results for other McConnells are likely to link them to one of those 5 tables. By comparing the results that you've already found for the 2 McConnells with the modals for each of the 5 tables, you may be able to guess where the Sorenson McConnells would fall on the tables. To do this, open another browser window and go to the project tables at http://dna-project.clan-donald-usa.org/tables.htm. The tables with McConnells are the I1c Red, R1a Red, R1b Red, R1b Green, and R1b Yellow tables. This is when the use of the FTDNA Lab Standard parameter in the Sorenson database becomes helpful. For the first 30 FTDNA markers, the FTDNA standard (working columnwise) gives the allele values in the order used by FTDNA, which is the same as the order on the left side of the tables. Beyond 30 markers, the order is a little mixed up, with some FTDNA markers listed out of t! he FTDNA order, and some Sorenson only markers mixed in. You will probably be able to correctly guess the right tables by looking at those markers within the first 30 that match the default values. 7)If you think that you have identified the tables containing the closest relatives of these men, find your mismatches from the first search and substitute the modal values for one of the tables if they are different from the mismatched default values. If you have correctly identified the table where you would find one of these men, this should improve your results further for that man. CAUTION: The search results page is ordered by closeness of match to the input values. If you input values that more closely match the second McConnell on the results page than the first, the next search page will list them in reverse order. This can be confusing if you're not expecting it, so watch out for it! This is one reason to keep a copy of your initial search results handy and you may want to save a copy of the the results of your second search as well. 8)Now concentrate on the test results for the man who most closely matches the values you input for the second search. For the small number of markers that you still haven't matched, check the values for any McConnell men in the same table. If they are different from your last input values for those markers, trying them may result in more matches. Other variations of this technique are to check values for some of the closest spelling variants such as McConnel, MacConnell, and McDonald in the same table, and to look at values for the man in the table who appears to be the closest match for the man in the database. 9)Sometimes you will need to guess allele values. When you have to do this, start by checking the values closest to the modal for the group, if you know the modal. If not, you can start with values in the middle range for the marker, i.e., if marker values range from 10 to 16 for marker 393, and you have eliminated the value 13, you could try 12 and 14 before trying the other values. Some markers, like 385a and 385b and 463a, 463b, 463c, and 463d, are a little tricky. The standard tests don't really distinguish between the markers in these groupings, and the Sorenson database results pages handle them in a confusing way. For beginners trying to figure out results for these markers, it is simplest to successively guess the same number at all locations. Example: You are trying to figure out your values at 459a and 459b. You seem to match people on the R1b Yellow table, and the modal value for 459a is 11 and the modal value for 459b is 14. Try guessing 11 for both 459a and 459b! first. If you get two matches, you're done. If you get one match, then you know that you have a value of 11 at one of the markers. Now try guessing 14 for both markers. If you get two matches, you're done, and if you get one match, you know you have a 14 at one of the markers. So if you have an 11 at one marker and a 14 at the other, then you are done. If not, try the whole number values close to the modals before trying some of the other values, which would be more unusual. So you would try 10, 12, 13, and 15 before trying the other possibilities. As soon as you have two matching values, you are done. Once you are done, choose the smaller value for 459a and the larger value for 459b. By doing so you are following a convention; if you mistakenly input the values in the wrong order, the Sorenson match page will still report that you matched, but when you go to compare results elsewhere, you will mismatch with others following the convention. You should be able to find the values for both men using these steps, and if you have experience using the project tables and keep track of your guesses and results, you probably won't take nearly as long as I did. Important Note: The author of this message may not be subscribed to this list. If you would like to reply to them, please click on the Message Board URL link above and respond on the board.