Custom Clustering from Ancestry

[Biggles50]

I have had another session with Custom Clusters.

In post #14 there is the detail of the brickwall that I am working on.

This time I selected just two 1C’s and one 1C1R for the sequence.

It generated 8, 22, 28 & 57 cluster grids.

Nothing looks to help, in fact the opposite.

The vast majority are wholly Paternal but via the Paternal Grandmother when what was really wanted is an OMIT feature so that I could tell the system to ignore those matches that have specific Group tags.  Plus an Include feature so that the DNA matches that I have added a specific Group such as Work In Progress group can be selected which in turn will force the algorithm to look at those who are Tagged.

Then, Hopefully the Clusters would be based on Paternal Paternal matches and hopeful unknowns who share with Paternal Paternal matches. 

At lease this is where my head is at present.

[David Nicoll]

Hi, I think you need to take the same approach as you would manually. Look at the people who are in your close cluster, who you cannot assign to paternal maternal line and then pick people who are at the once removed or further, and try clustering with them.
I am not sure if you are lucky or unlucky, the biggest cluster I have managed is about 20. All my clusters are in the 40 to 15 cM range so this is not really helping at the moment.

[Glen in Tinsel Kni]

I don't think it's unfair to say that it's another DNA 'feature' that many think is the answer to everything when it's nothing of the sort. With a large and robust set of matches it may offer a bit of time saving but I still feel that it provides no more answers than diligent grouping and tree building in most cases.

Slightly off topic but the most beneficial thing I feel we could have is seeing which side we link from the perspective of our matches. It's not as if Ancestry don't know, they just won't reveal it.

[SouthseaSteel]

I don't think it's unfair to say that it's another DNA 'feature' that many think is the answer to everything when it's nothing of the sort. With a large and robust set of matches it may offer a bit of time saving but I still feel that it provides no more answers than diligent grouping and tree building in most cases.

I completely agree!!! Correct me if I'm wrong but this feature does not provide us with any NEW information about Matches or anything for that matter - it just slices and dices information already available and presents it in a new way.  Like I say, please correct me if I am missing something

[Josephine]

This isn't about the function, exactly, but I wish it was possible to copy and paste the relationship estimates from the screen when I'm looking at the Custom Cluster results.

As it is, I have to hover my mouse over the little box to get the pop-up text, try to memorize something like, "1/2 3rd cousin 1x removed or 4th cousin," click my mouse in another window or slide it over to my other monitor and click that screen to get to my database... and by that point, I can only be certain that I've remembered the first part correctly. So I have to do it all over again, in reverse, to get back to the Ancestry screen and hover over the little box, then back to my other screen, to type in the rest of it... Multiple times over for shared matches with one person. I find that to be a bit onerous.