FTDNATiP, Y-Matches, setup

[JC399]

The way FTDNATiP is setup is very awkward for a normal user such as myself. It's nice I can click the little icon and see the report, but what if I want to compare with someone who isn't displayed? Is there any way to do this?

The other thing is they only show you certain matches at certain distances. Is there any way to see people at a distance "I" specify? For me this is very confusing because when I look at my matches at 67 markers I often can't see how far they are back at 37 for the reason they are too distant to be displayed. For example I have 6 matches at 67 markers and I can't see any of them at 37. One of them I can't even see at 37, 25, or 12. That makes it very hard to see what's happening. Furthermore, I can't even see their DNA signature so I can't count the mutations manually. How can I change this?

[efgen]

FTDNA doesn't provide the capability to do customized searches/comparisons in their database. However, they have provided you with names and email addresses of your matches, so you can always email your matches to discuss details.

You can also upload your results to Ysearch (from your Y-DNA Matches tab) and do the type of searches/comparisons that you are interested in. The downside is that participation in Ysearch is voluntary, so you probably won't find all your matches there. The upside is that you may find matches who tested with companies other than FTDNA.

[JC399]

FTDNA doesn't provide the capability to do customized searches/comparisons in their database. However, they have provided you with names and email addresses of your matches, so you can always email your matches to discuss details.

You can also upload your results to Ysearch (from your Y-DNA Matches tab) and do the type of searches/comparisons that you are interested in. The downside is that participation in Ysearch is voluntary, so you probably won't find all your matches there. The upside is that you may find matches who tested with companies other than FTDNA.

I have already done that. Even ysearch has restrictions on how you can search, but it's much better than here. One problem though is there is no FTDNATiP calculator there.

I have noticed there are some people who have downloaded the entire ysearch database and done calculations on it. How did they do that? I can think of ways I would do it if I wanted to write a software program or a shell script to read and parse the data, but that would take a bit of work, and a long time running. Is there a way to FTP it or something?

[MMaddi]

I have already done that. Even ysearch has restrictions on how you can search, but it's much better than here. One problem though is there is no FTDNATiP calculator there.

I have noticed there are some people who have downloaded the entire ysearch database and done calculations on it. How did they do that? I can think of ways I would do it if I wanted to write a software program or a shell script to read and parse the data, but that would take a bit of work, and a long time running. Is there a way to FTP it or something?

You can do something like what you want to do with Internet Explorer and Excel.

Do your search on ysearch and then do a haplotype comparison between the people. This will give you a table with the haplotypes for each on the screen. Right click on the page. You will see an option on the menu to "Export to Excel" or something like that. Click on that. As long as you have Excel on your computer, it will automatically open Excel and download the table to a new spreadsheet.

Then you can save the spreadsheet and sort by whatever markers you want to sort by. And possibly write a program to manipulate the data further.

Mike

[JC399]

You can do something like what you want to do with Internet Explorer and Excel.

Do your search on ysearch and then do a haplotype comparison between the people. This will give you a table with the haplotypes for each on the screen. Right click on the page. You will see an option on the menu to "Export to Excel" or something like that. Click on that. As long as you have Excel on your computer, it will automatically open Excel and download the table to a new spreadsheet.

Then you can save the spreadsheet and sort by whatever markers you want to sort by. And possibly write a program to manipulate the data further.

Mike

Thanks. I was talking more about downloading "everything", but what you describe would be useful. I normally don't use Internet Explorer so there's no export to Excel for me. I don't use Excel anyway. But I can copy and paste the tables into a text editor and it turns out to be tab delimited text that can be read into an application like Excel or something else. You can do something similar with the project page data here and I have done this too. I was just wondering how they downloaded the entire database. With that you get the haplogroup and a lot of other information too you wouldn't get from a table, not to mention the possibility of doing your own custom searches ysearch can't do.

[vineviz]

I have noticed there are some people who have downloaded the entire ysearch database and done calculations on it. How did they do that?

It is not possible, I think, to "download" the database. Most poeple that use it do the extraction manually, usually by haplogroup.

You also asked about another TMRCA calculator. A good one is here:

http://www.scs.uiuc.edu/~mcdonald/tmrca.htm

[JC399]

It is not possible, I think, to "download" the database. Most poeple that use it do the extraction manually, usually by haplogroup.

You also asked about another TMRCA calculator. A good one is here:

http://www.scs.uiuc.edu/~mcdonald/tmrca.htm

Thanks. I've seen those public domain calculators before. It kind of looks like they are not not using individual mutation rates. It looks more like they are using a single rate that depends on which test you took. Is that true? I think Sorenson, and a few other sites have those too. It's certainly an option if you don't mind entering the data manually.

With regard to the download, the other option would be to write a program to do it for you. I'm not sure if I have a good enough reason to go through all that trouble though. Maybe one day when I'm extremely bored I'll give it a shot.

[vineviz]

Thanks. I've seen those public domain calculators before. It kind of looks like they are not not using individual mutation rates. It looks more like they are using a single rate that depends on which test you took. Is that true? I think Sorenson, and a few other sites have those too. It's certainly an option if you don't mind entering the data manually.

Practically speaking, the impact of using individual marker mutation rates in the TMRCA is likely to be relatively minor. It's a nice refinement but it doesn't add a whole lot to the accuracy of the estimate, especially when you are comparing large numbers of markers (say, more than 30).

[JC399]

Practically speaking, the impact of using individual marker mutation rates in the TMRCA is likely to be relatively minor. It's a nice refinement but it doesn't add a whole lot to the accuracy of the estimate, especially when you are comparing large numbers of markers (say, more than 30).

In my case I'm seeing as much as a 2 generation variation at 67 markers and 6 mutations. I can think of some rare cases where it might be more, though typically I am sure it's less. Here is a paper that describes how to do this calculation with individual mutation rates.

http://www.genetics.org/cgi/reprint/158/2/897.pdf

Of course, it requires knowing what those mutation rates are, and in the case of the upper 30, that might be hard to do. But there's nothing preventing someone from using constant mutation rates in that region, while using individual mutation rates in the rest.

[vineviz]

In my case I'm seeing as much as a 2 generation variation at 67 markers and 6 mutations. I can think of some rare cases where it might be more, though typically I am sure it's less.

The 90% confidence interval with those conditions is something like 8 to 32 generations, so a shift of one or two generations at the 50% point is probably not statistically significant. Certainly it isn't genealogically meaningful.

Additionally, the TMRCA calculations are very dependent on the average mutation rate being used. Given that no one has a very accurate estimate of which rate should be used for markers 38-67, including FTDNA to the best of my knowledge, slight variations in the TMRCA estimates are not particulary informative.

[JC399]

The 90% confidence interval with those conditions is something like 8 to 32 generations, so a shift of one or two generations at the 50% point is probably not statistically significant. Certainly it isn't genealogically meaningful.

Additionally, the TMRCA calculations are very dependent on the average mutation rate being used. Given that no one has a very accurate estimate of which rate should be used for markers 38-67, including FTDNA to the best of my knowledge, slight variations in the TMRCA estimates are not particulary informative.

Those last 30 markers are the ones where there were no mutations - at least for the people I know about so the variation in TMRCA wasn't coming from there. It was mainly from the lower 37. In particular, mostly from the 26-37 region.

Furthermore, I never meant to imply I thought it was making a huge difference, I was just pointing out if someone wanted to take that into account they could and the method for doing this is described in that paper. When I get some free time I was thinking of writing a Mathematica program to see if I can match the FTDNATiP results. Though that may be difficult given the exact mutation rates FTDNATiP uses are not known. I have seen some estimates, however.

[vineviz]

Those last 30 markers are the ones where there were no mutations - at least for the people I know about so the variation in TMRCA wasn't coming from there. It was mainly from the lower 37. In particular, mostly from the 26-37 region.

The mutation rate for markers that haven't exhibited a mutation plays the same role in TMRCA calculations as the rate for markers that have exhibited a mutation.

Unless you know exactly the inputs used by FTDNATip, replicating the results in an independent calculator will be impossible.

Also, it is relatively easy to construct a TMRCA calculator using Walsh's method with individual marker mutation rates in Excel.

[JC399]

The mutation rate for markers that haven't exhibited a mutation plays the same role in TMRCA calculations as the rate for markers that have exhibited a mutation.

Unless you know exactly the inputs used by FTDNATip, replicating the results in an independent calculator will be impossible.

Also, it is relatively easy to construct a TMRCA calculator using Walsh's method with individual marker mutation rates in Excel.

As I said before, I don't use Excel or any other Microsoft products for that matter, nor do I have any desire to. As for the impossibility of matching FTDNATiP, I guess I'll have to see that for myself.

With regard to markers that haven't exibited a mutation playing a roll, that's not the issue. It's whether it's playing a roll in the "differential" TMRCA. If all markers are the same, for each individual, they can't contribute to a "differential" calculation, regardless of whatever values are used.

[vineviz]

With regard to markers that haven't exibited a mutation playing a roll, that's not the issue. It's whether it's playing a roll in the "differential" TMRCA. If all markers are the same, for each individual, they can't contribute to a "differential" calculation, regardless of whatever values are used.

It would probably help if you were to clarify you mean by "differential", I think. But I'll try to explain it anyway.

Using more markers in a TMRCA calculation will change the TMRCA estimate produced by the calculation, even if there are no mutations in the additional markers tested.

And unless two different calculators use the same mutation rate estimate for the additional markers, each will change the TMRCA estimate by a different amount when the additional markers are added.

The TMRCA estimate is a non-linear function of the mutation rate and the number of mutations per marker. A change of zero is informative and impacts the estimate produced by the model described by Walsh.

The process of actually building a calculator is highly informative, and will allow you to see how the inputs interact. The whole excercise become much more intuitive once you expend the energy to understand it.

[vineviz]

As for the impossibility of matching FTDNATiP, I guess I'll have to see that for myself.

FTDNATiP has as inputs: 1) some algorithm for calculating genetic distance (that takes into account RecLOH events at the multi-copy markers); and 2) 38 mutation rate estimates (one each for the first 37 markers and a single estimate for the final panel).

The GD algorithm would be easiest to crack, I think, but in order to reverse engineer the FTDNATiP mutation rate estimates you would need access to at least to 39 haplotypes which varied from each other at exactly one marker each. Leaving aside the problem that these 39 haplotypes don't exist, you still have to hope that there is a single solution to the problem of trying to simultaneously solve for the 38 mutation rate estimates.

Good luck.