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When I did my test, they gave me results at three different levels. The first and most detailed was called Speculative and there were two more after that. Which level can you accurately claim as your heritage?
The main thing to understand is that the test is better at separating DNA from different continents like Europe vs Asia, and also broadly regional areas like Northern Europe from Southern Europe. But trying to break it down any more than that is just speculative.
I can say with good confidence I am 63% Northern European and 37% Southern European (Italian, in my case) - all three big DNA companies agree on that. But to break down the Northern European further is where the numbers from the different companies are all over the place and there's no consistency.
When I did my test, they gave me results at three different levels. The first and most detailed was called Speculative and there were two more after that. Which level can you accurately claim as your heritage?
There are three levels. Conservative, Standard and Speculative. Conservative levels 90%, Standard Levels 75%, and Speculative 50%. The crux of your ancestry should show in Conservative and in most cases Standard. Conservative for many people, especially non-European, and sub-regional ancestry leaves a very large "unassigned" portion. Speculative is a very high resolution but also a possibility for a erroneous assignment especially at sub-regional Sub-regional. By this I mean European is Continental, then Northwest European is regional, then Irish, Scandinavian, English is sub-regional.
For example in Conservative and Speculative you show no Sub-Saharan African but in Speculative you show 0.2, high probability it is probably noise, could be real but being it wasn't immediately flagged alleles is a strong indication it is noise. Now if you show no SSA in Conservative, 0.5 % in Standard and 1% in Speculative, the SSA assignment is probably accurate. I'm using a small % in this case. Speculative assigns the highest detail.
23andMe may default the setting to "Speculative" for Ancestry Composition but you need to first view in Conservative and Standard.
As far as claiming ancestry? Depends what people want to be. Someone may be quicker to claim 0.5 Native American and paint themselves Indian before they claim 0.5 African and will take that as an error. Ancestry DNA admixture testing is not defining what your ancestry. It is comparing against a database of selected populations (not the entire world) and for some groups not even robust. It is purely a statistical exercise. It can give you an idea of what consists of your ancestry, even if you were 90% European and 10% East Asian, it's a estimate.
So, I show 0.1 East Asian in Speculative and Standard, but 0 in Conservative. Even though it is a miniscule number, is it likely reliable or not? Other than that, I came back very European, especially from the Mediterranean area.
So, I show 0.1 East Asian in Speculative and Standard, but 0 in Conservative. Even though it is a miniscule number, is it likely reliable or not? Other than that, I came back very European, especially from the Mediterranean area.
I agree with PA2UK. As I mentioned in my previous email. With 23andMe, stepping up through Conservative, to Standard, and landing in Speculative to see the first appearance of East Asian is highly indicative of statistical noise. There are a number of Europeans who come back with trace amounts in Speculative view only.
In order to make a good case, I like to see ancestry appear, even if very small assigned in Conservative view first. If it starts smaller in Conservative and increase even if slightly on it's way to Speculative view would be more reliable. I personally would not brainstorm over 0.1 in Speculative view.
If you want to look at your DNA in another way I'd recommend going over to gedmatch and painting your DNA against the multiple datasets they offer (I'm fond of Eurogenes K=15V2). See how big the segment is and if it's consistent across data sets.
To take the build positions and convert them to cM numbers. In general I wouldn't bother looking at it much if it isn't at least 8-10 cM (7 cM is the minimum people mostly consider legitimate for cousin matching segments).
You can also use tools on the site and find people who might match on that segment and see if they come up with the same ethnicity, in particular if you find someone who matches on that same segment and it's also that ethnicity but larger.
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