Another Look at Ancestry's Revised Ethnicity Estimates

There have been lots of comments about the revised ethnicity estimates from AncestryDNA tests. 

Going along with the update is an Ethnicity Estimate 2020 White Paper, revised from the previous version which describes the technique as a "fast, sophisticated, and accurate method for estimating genetic ethnicity "

Like many people, my estimate increased my share of Scottish ethnicity from 35% for Ireland & Scotland previously to 19% for Scotland and 23% for Ireland, 42% in total (the uncertainty in these estimates includes 0% for both.) Many others are reporting increased Scottish ethnicity and Ancestry rushed out a blog post Why Your Latest Results Could Include More Scotland In Your Ethnicity Estimates.

That blog includes a bar chart showing that "average typical results for someone from England, they might look something like this" showing England and Northwest Europe 67%, Scotland 18%, Germanic Europe 7%, Norway 3%, Sweden 2%, Ireland 2%, Wales 1%.

My 29% for England and Northwest Europe is less than half the average typical. My Scottish is about average. My Ireland is 10 times the average, I'll have to make sure I have a supply of green for St Patrick's Day. My Norway average. 

What isn't included in the average typical result is European Jewish. Could that be Germanic Europe? If so with a Jewish grandfather I'd expect 25% which is over 3 times the average. It may be that adding the information on where you're from and comparing your percentages to the "average typical" is a useful perspective on these ethnicity results.

The ancestry blog post gives bar charts with similar percentages for people from Scotland, Northeast England and West Midlands.

Also in the 2020 White Paper Ancestry gives a table of reference panel regions and the number of samples, the top 20 with most samples are reproduced here. I wonder why Scotland has so many more samples than England and Ireland.

Rank	Region	Samples
1	Indigenous Puerto Rico	4791
2	Indigenous Cuba	3420
3	Indigenous Eastern South America	2873
4	Indigenous Haiti & Dominican Republic	2858
5	Indigenous Americas —Colombia & Venezuela	2500
6	Indigenous Americas —North	2284
7	Germanic Europe	2095
8	France	1754
9	Scotland	1411
10	England & Northwestern Europe	1326
11	Indigenous Americas —Central	1232
12	Eastern Europe & Russia	1084
13	Southern Italy	971
14	The Balkans	824
15	Sweden	740
16	Ireland	732
17	Indigenous Americas —Mexico	720
18	Portugal	713
19	Norway	642
20	Spain	637

I was surprised to see the regions where most Ancestry clients would be likely to have ancestry so far down the list, and that increasing their number is not a priority — 

"We have also begun a new diversity initiative to gather DNA samples from underrepresented regions around the world in order to expand the number of regions we can report back to customers."