Measuring tree completeness
One of the single most important factors in determining the likelihood that somebody we match as a DNA cousin matches us in a particular way is tree completeness.
That’s the degree to which we — and our match — have identified all of the ancestral lines from which our shared DNA might have come.
Or, in the words of Blaine T. Bettinger, The Genetic Genealogist, “how complete are the trees you are comparing? In other words, how confident are you that the DNA couldn’t have come from other shared ancestors?”1
Or, to say it another way, how many of our second or third or fourth great grandparents have we really identified so that we can see whether the DNA we share with a cousin would likely have come from this set of known and identified fourth great grandparents and not from that set of unknown and unidentified fourth great grandparents?
As Blaine has explained, “Consideration of Tree Completeness (how much of two trees you’re actually comparing when you’re looking for a common ancestor) is essential when utilizing DNA evidence. … Use caution when making conclusions based on trees with big holes! There are ways to deal with this (like location, etc.), but we can’t deal with the issue if we don’t recognize that it exists.”2
Now all of us — The Legal Genealogist included — have holes in our family trees. Branches where we know we have work to do to fill in the leaves we need.
But it hasn’t always been easy to see those holes when we’ve needed to. In other words, it’s been hard to know when we need to work around the holes with location and other clues.
Until now.
When DNA Painter has made it as easy as filling in some blanks, or uploading a GEDCOM file.3
Which it then paints into a gorgeous — and telling — chart:
You can, if you’d like, hover over any particular ancestor and see the line of descent in that chart:
Or, if you prefer, you can see in a pedigree-tree format. Here’s just a portion of my paternal side in that format:
It will also tell you, in no uncertain terms, where you’re falling short as a matter of basic mathematics:
Sigh… I have a lot of work to do… including some just-plain data entry stuff…
Now… one small but annoying problem I saw was the program’s inability to handle some foreign language characters in a GEDCOM upload. My father’s side of my tree is filled, for example, with umlauts — those double dots over a vowel in the German language that change the way it’s pronounced. Those get rendered in a GEDCOM upload as a question mark. It handles these just fine when you type them or copy-and-paste them online.
Those with a free DNA Painter account can have one tree for free to go along with their one free DNA Painter profile once the tool is publicly released to all. Those of us who think DNA Painter is about the next best thing to sliced bread and subscribed the minute it became a subscription service can have as many as 50 trees to go along with our 50 profiles — it’s available to subscribers now. And breaking maternal and paternal trees into two for each of the profiles we manage is a really nice way of organizing these.
So shelling out the $30 for six months or $55 for a year is a small price to pay for the utility of being able to see all of the issues with our tree completeness for ourselves and for the profiles we manage — not to mention supporting a terrific tool and its future development.
Ensuring that we’re using DNA evidence effectively means knowing when our job is filling in the blanks — either with more research to identify specific ancestors or with other clues like location.
This tool helps us see just when that’s critical.
Well done, DNA Painter.
Cite/link to this post: Judy G. Russell, “Filling in the blanks,” The Legal Genealogist (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : posted 28 July 2019).
SOURCES
- Blaine T. Bettinger, “The DNA Era of Genealogy,” The Genetic Genealogist, posted 17 Dec 2016 (https://thegeneticgenealogist.com/ : accessed 28 July 2019). ↩
- Blaine T. Bettinger, Facebook status entry, Genetic Genealogy Tips & Techniques group, posted 12 Feb 2018, Facebook.com (https://www.facebook.com/groups/geneticgenealogytipsandtechniques/ : accessed 28 July 2019). ↩
- See Dick Eastman, “GEDCOM Explained,” Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter, posted 24 May 2014 (https://blog.eogn.com/ : accessed 28 July 2019). ↩
This is great! Over the past few days I’ve been looking for a place where I could make a FAN chart with the data I want to use and not necessarily what is in my genealogy program. Thanks for sharing, and “Great Job” DNA Painter! 🙂
Isn’t it amazing? Jonny does such a good job with these tools…
I am not a subscriber, but I don’t see where I can make 1 free tree. My tabs across the top do not include “Trees”, only Profiles, Help, Tools, and Subscribe. Yet, the subscribe page says I get 1 free tree. Hmmmm.
The non-subscriber feature hasn’t been turned on yet. It will be, soon, so keep checking back (the site operator is on vacation).
Jill – sorry – the subscribe page mentioning trees was published accidentally! Because GEDCOM is a rather loose format, different files can differ substantially. Hence I’ve released the functionality to a smaller test group before it goes out to all members (the alternative would have been to face an avalanche of complaints!). I’m hoping I’ll have it ready by mid-August. Thanks for your interest.
Jonny is planning to look into umlauts and other non-English characters when he’s back from vacation. Others have mentioned that on the Facebook user group.
Currently having subscribers using it provides more tests of various gedcoms. The plan is for non-subscribers to have 1 tree, just like they have 1 profile, once it’s fully released. Jonny mentioned that would be in August.
He requested, and I’ve sent him, the GEDCOM file to look at to see how this can be resolved.
I just uploaded my tree, and I see holes in my tree that I apparently have been ignoring! I also really appreciate the xDNA inheritance path…it makes it very clear.
It really does make it very clear where the holes are. Sigh… 🙂
Thanks for sharing Judy. It’s refreshing to see that you also have highs and lows. I’m wondering if your purple ancestors are Irish?
No, that’s my direct paternal German line — with an MPE in 1855. My 2nd great grandmother — with whom I am most annoyed — didn’t name my great grandfather’s father when she had him baptized, and he never used a surname other than hers.
Aren’t those so frustrating? My great-grandmother was born in 1894 in Scotland ~ her birth record says illegitimate where her father’s name should be. Four trips to Scotland and I’m no closer to an answer 🙁
At least I’ve gotten the four trips out of it 😉