Don't understand my DNA results - help!

[tommydog]

I did a DNA test with Myheritage and really don't understand the results. Videos I have seen of people who have done this tend to show that the number of matches roughly correlate with the ethnicity results. But in my case this seems to be way off. For instance it says I am 5.3% North African, but I only have 18 matches, whereas I have 2234 matches for English but am 0% English. Similarly why am I 1% Nigerian with only 41 matches and 0% Scandinavian with 1545 matches? Further down the table I have 22 matches for Chinese and Vietnamese, but it still scores 0%, whereas North African scores 5.3% with fewer matches. l know all of this is an estimate and cannot be precise, but I'm interested in why the Myheritage algorithm determined my percentages the way it did? Can anyone shed any light on this?

Ethnicity	Your Ethnicity results	Number of matches
North and West European	91.1%	1332
North African	5.3%	18
Balkan	2.6%	264
Nigerian	1%	41
Irish, Scottish, Welsh	0%	2297
English	0%	2234
Scandinavian	0%	1545
Iberian	0%	510
East European	0%	417
Italian	0%	267
Greek and South Italian	0%	173
Baltic	0%	94
Finnish	0%	88

 

[Tamakore]

I did a DNA test with Myheritage and really don't understand the results. Videos I have seen of people who have done this tend to show that the number of matches roughly correlate with the ethnicity results. But in my case this seems to be way off. For instance it says I am 5.3% North African, but I only have 18 matches, whereas I have 2234 matches for English but am 0% English. Similarly why am I 1% Nigerian with only 41 matches and 0% Scandinavian with 1545 matches? Further down the table I have 22 matches for Chinese and Vietnamese, but it still scores 0%, whereas North African scores 5.3% with fewer matches. l know all of this is an estimate and cannot be precise, but I'm interested in why the Myheritage algorithm determined my percentages the way it did? Can anyone shed any light on this?

Ethnicity	Your Ethnicity results	Number of matches
North and West European	91.1%	1332
North African	5.3%	18
Balkan	2.6%	264
Nigerian	1%	41
Irish, Scottish, Welsh	0%	2297
English	0%	2234
Scandinavian	0%	1545
Iberian	0%	510
East European	0%	417
Italian	0%	267
Greek and South Italian	0%	173
Baltic	0%	94
Finnish	0%	88

In my experience, the MyHeritage ethnicity algorithms are not as accurate as those at 23andMe or AncestryDNA. For example, MyHeritage said that I had 12.8% East European ancestry. I know my genealogy pretty well back seven generations and I have no East European ancestors. Other companies did not show this East European ancestry.

That being said, your results are not that way off if you consider that English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Scandinavian and (probably) Iberian all fall within the broader category of North and West European. Adding up your five biggest match numbers, about 85% of your matches are within the broad category North and West European, compared with your 91.1% ethnicity result.

However, it seems the MyHeritage algorithms were not able to identify anything distinctively English (for example) in your DNA, whereas some other companies can even identify which English or Irish county your ancestors probably lived in.

 

[qh777]

I'm skeptical of Myheritage as well. I didn't purchase a kit from them but I did upload my raw dna data from ancestry and 23andme. It didn't show any British and Irish ancestry where both Ancestry and 23andme did at significant numbers. Ancestry: 39% England & Northwest Europe, 34% Scotland, Ireland 9%, Wales 8%, Germanic Europe 6%, Sweden & Denmark 4% 23andme: 51.7% British and Irish, 48.2% French and German, 0.1% Unassigned.