Louis Kessler’s Behold Blog     The Behold User Forum

... ago, I was interviewed on Zoom by Ditsa Keren for an article that was published on DNAweekly today. DNAweekly publishes an interesting blog with a wide range of articles about consumer-based DNA tests that extend into their use by genealogists. They reach out and look for third-party software that ...

Ancestry has recently made changes to its display of the amount of DNA you match with someone. The amount is shown in cM (centimorgans). Most DNA testers using their DNA for genealogy purposes know what cM are and what they represent. Your DNA match ...

... In yesterday’s post, I wanted to see if the What Are The Odds (WATO) tool at the DNA Painter site would work for endogamy, and I came out satisfied that it does, for either Ancestry DNA numbers or Family Tree DNA numbers, with the < 7 cM matches removed from the latter. WATO is designed to help ...

... Terry has got several dozen of his relatives on that side of the family to do DNA tests. One aspect of what we are doing led to Jennifer Mendelsohn suggesting to me that we try WATO – the What Are the Odds tool built by Leah LaPerle Larkin and Jonny Perl. I was concerned that the endogamy in our matches might add too much to the shared cM of two people. And I ...

Lots has been happening on the DNA analysis front in the past few months. Lots of very divergent opinions on a whole bunch of issues. Here are my opinions. You are free to agree or disagree, but these are mine. AncestryDNA Ancestry has had performance issues. Couldn’t they ...

... your 6 and 7 cM matches from your match list. In my case, I have 192,306 DNA matches at Ancestry. Of those, 54,498 matches are below 8 cM meaning Ancestry will drop over 28% of the the people on my match list. The Proof Corner Many of the DNA experts understand that a 6 or 7 cM segment is small and is rarely useful for ...

... Family Tree Beta. My tree as calculated by 23andMe back then included 13 of my DNA matches. It placed 8 on my father’s side and 5 on my mother’s side. My automated tree today has two more of my matches included, so there are now 15. The 8 circled matches at the left are on my father’s side. The 7 circled matches at the right are on my mother’s side. The ...

... is: Presenter Louis Kessler explains those mysterious files that we download from DNA testing companies, helps us to understand what's in them, and shows us the ways we can make use of them. He will also discuss whether Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) tests are worthwhile for genealogists. I hope you come and join me for this. To register for my presentation, you’ll ...

... conferences and became a genealogy speaker myself. Then about 4 years ago, DNA testing started to become a thing, and I jumped fully in, finding everything about it fascinating, and I wrote my program Double Match Triangulator to help decipher matches. About 2 years ago, the Facebook era of genealogy groups began. I joined and started participating in many groups ...

I have now taken 5 DNA microarray (chip) tests with Family Tree DNA, 23andMe, Ancestry DNA, MyHeritage DNA and Living DNA. I have also taken two Whole Genome Sequencing ...