Weighting used for mutation rates used in Similarity Analysis

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Contents 1 Comment 2 Weighting	This is one of a series of articles on Genealogical Methods, prepared in association with The Tapestry. See Index for a list of related articles.

Comment

The program YAll makes use of marker specific mutation rates for purposes of calculating YDNA similarity between two "kits". One option when running YALL is to "weight" these mutation rates so that fast moving markers are given less weight than fast moving markers. These differences are not negligible, and can amount to as much as a four order of magnitude difference in mutation rates. The rationale for weighting the rates is based on the fact that in the same time period (as measured in generations) a fast moving marker will mutate more frequently than a slow moving marker. If unweighted, mutations on these fast moving markers tends to swamp out the effect of mutations on slow moving markers. By weighting the rates, the effect of fast moving markers is discounted, and that of slow moving markers is given more importance.

Weighting