GENEALOGY-DNA-L Archives

From: <>
Subject: [GENEALOGY-DNA] re genetic distance
Date: Fri, 1 Sep 2006 8:59:54 -0700

IT SEEMs to me that if one wants to recognize the inadequacy of genetic distance as a marker, one can simply add mentally the error bars to the number. So (roughly speaking--so as not to offend the professional statisticians out there) a genetic distance of 1 arising from an 8/9 match would actually represent 1+- sqrt(9). When one averages from 0 to 4 then one gets something larger than 1 and approaching 2 or 2/9 or about 22%. OTOH 32/36 yielding 4 would be 4+-6. So when one averages from 0 to 10 one would get something arond 5 so 5/36 is only about 14%.
JAL

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