Ethnicity Estimate 2018 White Paper

The AncestryDNA science team has developed a fast, sophisticated, and accurate method for estimating the historical origins of customers’ DNA going back several hundred to over 1,000 years. We have recently refined this method, resulting in an increase int the number of regions a customer might be assigned to. The update also enhanced the precision of both the regions assigned and the percentage assigned to each region. Many of these enhancements come from the updated method of analyzing segments of DNA instead of single positions. Given the cutting-edge nature of this type of science, we expect that we will be able to continue to refine our approach and improve estimates as the science evolves.