What Exactly ARE the Components used in Admixture tests?

[davef]

These tests cover the free to use and readily available calculators that people use through GedMatch. I cannot find a reasonable or sufficient explanation which describes what a "component" actually is (by component I mean things like West Med or Baltic in Eurogenes, you probably understand what I mean by now).

The best explanation I heard was that they represent a set of genes that are most frequent in a certain area. Baltic is obviously genes that peak in people living around the Baltic sea. Now if I score say 8 percent Baltic, does this mean at least 8 percent of my genes matches a typical person living in that area?

 

[Dinarid]

That's right. Different calculators use different components, and the most professional ones like FTDNA and 23andme simplify the admixture components into as broad categories as possible. GEDmatch is generally reliable, but some of it can be erroneous (for example, the one calculator- I forget which one- showed Albanian testers as having on average 0.017% Amerindian I believe.