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Sunday, June 25, 2017

Narrative Fallacy: It’s easy to fall into this trap




This post on Narrative Fallacy by James Tanner on his Genealogy Star blog is a gentle reminder to all of us. It is far too easy to reject research that doesn’t fit with the story we’ve woven.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!




Wednesday, June 21, 2017

A Different Brick Wall



Last week, a circuit breaker flipped.  I was working intensely on two projects when my circuits apparently overloaded. The projects have been sitting untouched on my desk for several days now.  I’m running in neutral  - idling.

What happened?  I haven’t a clue; but it seems useless to fight it.  In the meantime, I’ve been catching up on my reading and surfing the net.

My project trying to connect Sip families in Poland is temporarily on hold.  That’s OK.  The information will still be there when I get back to it – or maybe more information will have surfaced by then.

I am hopeful that using Genome Mate Pro will become clearer to me as discussion continues on the Facebook group.

Until my research gene gets turned on again, I’ll probably do some writing and reopen the video projects waiting in the queue.  Yep, the video projects sound good.  And I’ll find topics to keep this blog alive.

To everything there is a season.



Friday, June 9, 2017

Tribes of Great Britain and Their DNA




I don’t remember where I first saw this (It was about 20 minutes ago, after all), but it is interesting whether or not you have British ancestry.

The list of the study’s findings beneath the maps is especially interesting.  The maps are from abroadintheyard.com





Wednesday, June 7, 2017

Genome Mate Pro – A Steep Learning Curve



A  link to a 2015 post on IOWADNAPROJECT led me to look at Genome Mate Pro software.  The best description I’ve found of this app comes directly from that post:

Genome Mate is a desktop tool used to organize in one place the data collected while researching DNA comparisons. Besides data storage it has many features to aid in identifying common ancestors.
Features
·         Multiple Profiles for multiple kits
·         Import of 23andMe, FTDNA and GedMatch data
·         Chromosome Mapping of Common Ancestor
·         In Common With (ICW) Groups
·         Import of Gedcom data for each Profile
·         Surname Matching and Searching
·         Display of Overlapping Segments
·         X-List of X Chromosome Donors

It sounds like the perfect tool.

The software has been upgraded since that post, so while the description is good, the screenshots are no longer accurate.

This software is FREE. It was developed by Becky Mason Walker as she worked to coordinate and analyze information on her own DNA matches from 23andMe, FTDNA, and GEDmatch.

This software is also very complex – because it is very comprehensive.  But there are Youtube videos to help you get going; and there is a 16 part tutorial on Facebook co-authored by Leah La Perle Larkin and Blaine T. Bettinger. There is also a User Manual. See links below.

I’ve been at this for four days now, and have gotten to part 12 of the tutorial.  So far I’ve watched 3 of the videos.  I think that the videos will make more sense after completing the tutorial.  I expect to need to review some of this material more than once.

I am looking forward to actually trying to use this app – once I’ve had a first pass through the training process.  I’ll post a progress report.

Here are some links

Download the software:  http://getgmp.com/

There are nine videos. Links are on the getgmp site shown above, but here the link to the Introduction. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpl6Pp6AHy4

Tutorial - 16 part

There is a downloadable user’s guide in PDF format (265 pages).  Link is on the getgmp site.

The developer’s blog is here:  http://genealogypuzzlesdna.blogspot.com/

And there’s a group on Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/groups/GenomeMatePro/