Family List vs Ancestors Report

+5 votes
325 views
Can anyone explain to me why my family list shows me in 12 generations  852 family members while the ancestors report shows 856 people.

On 13 generations 956 against 971

On 14 generations 1029 against 1033

Family list:

https://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Special:FamilyList&p=5898875

Ancestors report:

http://wikitree.sdms.si/default.htm?report=rep1&WikiTreeID=Giampersa-1

It is the same count at 15 generations, where the list reaches its limit.

Thank you!
WikiTree profile: Regis Giampersa
in WikiTree Tech by Regis Giampersa G2G6 Mach 1 (16.2k points)
retagged by Ellen Smith

Hi Regis,

The Ancestors report says "Data is recalculated every Monday, so any changes you make will be visible on Monday."

Are there changes made during this last week?

Hi Rubén! No, I made changes more than a month ago.
The only two reason I can think of:

1. There is a bug.

2. Someone else made a change on profiles of your 11th. generation this week.
Rubén, as far as I know, I am manager of all of my ancestors profiles and the family activity feed shows no significant change.

I have some cousin marriages among my ancestors, so I believe a different algorithm used to create the ancestors report and the list might be the answer. Would you know where the rules for these reports are?

Regis, your line of thought makes sence. The algorithms used are different (I don't know what they are).

Clearly 20 of your 13th g-grandparents are added to your 15 generations family list (1049 - 1029).

On the other hand, only 16 of your 13th g-grandparents are added on generation 16 of your ancestor report (1049 - 1033).

The other 4 13th g-grandparents added to your 15 generations family list are:

  1. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Unknown-333480
  2. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/De_Torres-143
  3. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Bazan-33
  4. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/De_Moya-12

They also can be your n th g-grandparents through different paths and they are added to your ancestors report on other generations.

So the answer is on how the Family List and the Ancestors report are build.

Rubén, thank you! So I understand that my ancestors should appear only once in the list/tree and then be ignored, but somehow the algorithms have been build differently and are both doing this in different levels, so that on 15 generations it seems to get correct information. Anyway, which one is right? Or there is a different way to count ancestors? If so, should someone review both reports so that they show the same information?

An example:

JOHN
JOE PETER
MIKE DAVID
GEORGE FRANK
MARY  
JAMES

 

John is the father of Joe and Peter.
Joe is the father of Mike.
Mike is the father of George.
George is the father of Mary,
Mary is the mother of James.
 
Peter is the father of David.
David is the father of Frank.
Frank is the father of James.
 
John is the 2nd g-grandfather of James and
John is the 3rd g-grandfather of James.
Both statements are correct depending on the considered path.

I understand, but it seems to me there is a glitch somewhere and if there is a different way to see and count ancestors, both reports should be clear and have the rules used. I could find the same problem with Queen Elizabeth and she has 3096 against 2833 people on her 15th generation family tree. Which one is correct?

Regis, the Ancestors report and the Family List are not consistent because they belong to different environments, as Laura says WikiTree + is a tool outside WikiTree. Both of them are correct accordingly to the way each one of them works.

In reviewing the example you proposed on the Queen's ancestors I found the following:

The Ancestors report of the Queen's father shows that there is a total of 31 ancestors on generation 5 and 26 3rd. g-grandparets are added on generation 6 for a total of 57 ancestors.

The Family List of the Queen's father lists 31 people showing 4 generations of ancestors.and lists 49 people showing 5 generations of ancestors. A 5 generations Family List cover 3th g-grandparents.

57 - 49 = 8. Why 8 3th g-grandparents are not listed?

  1. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Hannover-24
  2. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg-1
  3. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Mecklenburg-Strelitz-14
  4. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Sachsen-Hildburghausen-7
  5. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Hessen-Kassel-9
  6. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Hannover-54
  7. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Nassau-Usingen-1
  8. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Leiningen-Dagsburg-1

They are the 8 g-grandparents of Mary Adelaide (Hannover) Württemberg. Mary Adelaide is the maternal grandmother of the Queen's father, so the 8 aforementioned persons are 3th g-grandparets of the Queen's father.

According to the Relationship Finder, the 8 people listed (also) are the 4th g-grandparets of the Queen's father. All of them are added to the Family List of the Queen's father on the next (6) generation, but they are numbered as "Identified Ancestors" on the "Ancestors Report" the preceding generation.

2 Answers

+4 votes
 
Best answer
Hi,

I checked the example and localised the problem.

Starting with Ximenez-24 it shows difference in 5th(6 on WT+) generation.

http://wikitree.sdms.si/function/WTWebAncestors/Ancestors.htm?UserID=09574462

https://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Special:FamilyList&p=09574462

On WikiTree 4 profiles are missing. WikiTree Lists them correctly. It is not related to privacy or project protection or cousins marriage. It is just that wikitree skips a few profiles and adds them at next generation and the numbers match again at later generations. Example of missing profile is https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/De_Carmona-8 which is listed on next generation. The error is on WikiTree's end, but I don't know the reason. It might have something to do with optimisation.

Aleš.

P.S. Cousins marriages are accounted for. That is seen in second column. it should always be previous value times 2. If it is not, there is a person in two lines. so second column should be 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048,...
by Aleš Trtnik G2G6 Pilot (793k points)
selected by Regis Giampersa

Thank you, Aleš! There is nothing better then being informed by the Master!

After some further testing it seems the problem is caused by a duplicates in different lines and at different generation.
+3 votes

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Family_List   this is the information of the Family List. It says it shows more ancestors and descendants than any where else on WikiTree.    So my question to you is, does your list also show descendants?  That would account for one difference since the ancestor report does not.    You can also show it with or without siblings which can also create a difference.  

The Ancestors report :This basic ancestor view uses the ahnen numbering system. See the Family List for more generations and flexibility, the Compact Family Tree for an alternative view with the numbers, 

 

by Laura Bozzay G2G6 Pilot (817k points)
Hi Laura, thank you for your comment.

My lists have only ancestors and no siblings nor descendants, you can try the links I placed on the question.

Somehow the ancestors list and the ancestors report act differently on the same information.

My question now is which one is correct.
I have run the Family List report against my family and checked it against my family and it was correct.  

I have not used the report in the Wiki+ which is an analysis tool and outside of WikiTree.  It is s tool used by members of WikiTree and the Data Doctors.

I think perhaps Ales can shed some light on this report.  I did notice is was showing ancestors at generation 16 and none at 15 in the identified column

Laura, the problem won't happen in your family tree, because you have only one cousin marriage in your 10th generation. As far back we go, it is common to have more distant cousins marrying to each other. This creates a pedigree collapse and I believe the problem is how both systems count common ancestors of these cousins. For exemple, Queen Elisabeth has a lot of these marriages in her genealogy and the calculators show a huge difference in counting the ancestors (hundreds difference in 15 generations). I am courious if the problem is in the data_doctors tool or within wikitree family lists. I hope Aleš Trtnik could take a look and also the Tech people from wikitree to solve the riddle.

Hi Regis.  I actually have a lot of cousins marrying, I just don't have all of them in and connected yet in WikiTree.  Still working on that!   So my tree is not showing it as much.  

I have gotten my direct line ancestors in.  Now am working on the siblings and cousins and that will show more cousin connections as the glass makers had to marry within the guild.  

Ales is out of town from what I hear on the Data Doctor list.    

I know the Family list matched my line when I checked it.  It shows

https://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Special:FamilyList&p=14839456  

It only lists Adam Walter once but he is in my direct ancestral line more than once.  As is his wife Marie Barbe Betz and his parents.  So he number on the list is for unique individuals.  

If I run the Ancestor List https://www.wikitree.com/treewidget/Pennie-22/9

You will see under Generation 7 Jean Georges dit Chambre Walter married to Ursule Walter.  They are 4th cousins.  Because this report stops at the 7th Generation you do not see that their lines converge at Adam and his wife.  

http://wikitree.sdms.si/default.htm?report=srch2&WikiTreeID=Pennie-22&Generations=29&SortOrder=Default&PageSize=10  when I ran this out of the Wiki+ it has more people because it is including siblings of my direct ancestors.    If I click on the blood relations only it drops the list down http://wikitree.sdms.si/default.htm?report=srch2&WikiTreeID=Pennie-22&Generations=29&OnlyBlood=1&SortOrder=Default&PageSize=10  but it has included someone who is NOT a blood relative to me.  And is showing people who are not part of that generation.  Something is wrong here.
I posted a note on the Data Doctors google group with examples of what is wrong.
Thanks! Let's see what happens!
I do know from experience that the ancestor report from wikitree+ will look AT a private profile but not BEYOND it. So if you have a private profile with members beyond that it won't count them.
I just ran the ancestors report out of WikiTree+  It appears to match my ancestors report out of the Tree/Tools with the following caveat.  The one in Trees / Tools lists the places where I have missing ancestors by number while the one out of WikiTree+ just counts entered profiles and shows a % of available profiles so where I do not have all of the great x # grandparents it does not show 100%.   Having said that, I notice that it lists who is in the generations except in 3 generations in the middle of the report...  not sure why that is happening...
I believe if there are 20 or more profiles it doesn't show them.
Ok to kind of recap what Steven and I found (he is another data doctor)

if you have anyone marked private the report stops at that point on wikitree+

If you have more than 20 ancestors it stops displaying the names so you can see who is showing

Our reports seem to match our tree reports pretty well.  

The example with Queen Elizabeth is likely being affected by project protection privacy settings.  

in the Person's Tree Steven thinks the word generation is a misnomer and being used to count steps from...   in my opinion that report is confusing.

drop down tools, "ancestor list for" is probably the most accurate. It lists them by ahnentafel number. This also lets you see exactly where the holes are in your tree.

If you don't know what Ahnentafel is, try here. https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/509522/ahnentafel-explained

Hi Steven, hi Laura, thank you for your comments and explanation.

It seems to me that the problem for my ancestors does not comes from any privacy or protection settings, because the ancestors count somewhere meets the same number.

I was only trying by curiosity the reports-ancestors of wikitree+ when I noted the difference. This report is simple and just helped me understand my pedigree collapse in numbers.

Anyway, I understand the concept of Ahnentafel and Ahnenverlust, therefore reports should - in my opinion - have the same outcome.

Hopefully doctors can find an explanation for this and I wish you do not take my curiosity that bad. Wish you all a nice week! Cheers, Régis

Related questions

+3 votes
2 answers
+16 votes
7 answers
+8 votes
4 answers
+4 votes
0 answers
157 views asked Aug 30, 2023 in WikiTree Tech by Ellen Smith G2G Astronaut (1.5m points)
+3 votes
2 answers
173 views asked Dec 11, 2019 in WikiTree Tech by William Arbuthnot of Kittybrewster G2G6 Pilot (181k points)
+4 votes
2 answers
401 views asked Jan 4, 2019 in WikiTree Tech by Roelof Scholtens G2G5 (5.8k points)
+4 votes
1 answer
142 views asked Dec 31, 2018 in WikiTree Tech by S Willson G2G6 Pilot (218k points)
+8 votes
4 answers

WikiTree  ~  About  ~  Help Help  ~  Search Person Search  ~  Surname:

disclaimer - terms - copyright

...