Archive | April 2025

Come celebrate DNA day with me!

Apr23

This Friday is DNA Day; a day we honor the discovery of the structure of DNA. To mark this occasion, most of the personal DNA testing companies are having sales. There are also special events all over this country at museums, schools, and web sites. GEDmatch has a sale on for its premium tools plus I am doing a presentation there at 2 pm Eastern time on Friday.

Click image for the page at GEDmatch about its DNA day. At the bottom of the page is a link to register for my talk.

My last talk at GEDmatch was an attempt to make it easier to use the site by explaining the main tools and how to use them. That talk is still available — just click here. Of course, by now, the home page has changed and new features have been added.

Friday’s talk is focused on how I myself use GEDmatch when trying to understand a new match. In other words, why I ask my matches at other sites to upload to GEDmatch! I will also discuss some mysteries that the tools at GEDmatch have helped me solve. Last, but not least, I will answer questions from the audience. Hope to “see” you all there.

UPDATE: The presentation will be posted on the GEDmatch YouTube channel soon. The slides are available online at https://slides.com/kittycooper/advanced-tools-at-gedmatch-using-segment-data-and-more

Nice New Features at GEDmatch

Apr17

I love the new notes feature at GEDmatch; it helps me keep track of which matches I have figured out. Plus it even works for all the kits I have there. For example, if I make a note on a match to my own kit, that same note is available when I run my brother’s or my Dad’s one-to-many. Here is how it looks on my one-to-many listing:

One-to-Many with some added notes (gray boxes in middle) – click image for a larger version


Clicking on “Add” in the notes column lets you give it a title and then put in some text. Only the title shows on the list so I use it for the surname of the line the match is related on. Warning, on my iPad the old text for title does not disappear when you type over it; however it is gone once the note is saved and retrieved again.

Another benefit for me, with the long list of kits I have uploaded on my dashboard, is that I can use the notes feature on that list to make the ones I want to use stand out. Personally, I have several DNA test results for myself and other family members which I have combined into one master kit (click here for that post). Now I can easily see which one I want to use as per the image below.

I am less delighted with the new tree presentation, although I am grateful that I can click “Classic View” to get the old text heavy version.
Continue reading →