Did Beyoncé help me find a bug with the relationship calculator?

Question

So, with Annette's help we got Beyoncé connected to Broussard dit Beausoleil and the rest of the Acadians. As I was working on this, I also did the same on Ancestry as a draft.

Now according to Ancestry, Beyoncé and I are 9th cousins. With WikiTree's calculator, we are 9th cousins 2 times removed.

On both sites, the same path links Beyoncé to Michel Richard (Lianné, there's your connection!) but a different path from me to Michel Richard is chosen. I have verified that all profiles from Ancesty's shorter path are also on WikiTree, so it does seem like WikiTree took the scenic route instead of the shortest one.

Comments

Is there anything Beyonce can't do?!

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I actually have a closer link than through Michel Richard! I have Broussard ancestors, too. 8th cousins, twice removed.

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Beyoncé and Lola are 9th cousins 1 time removed

 

mines through  Michel  Richard and Broussard also.

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For Chris: You can see this problem by comparing these two relationship calculators.

Roland and Beyoncé: shows that Michel Richard is Roland's 10x great grandfather.

Roland and Michel Richard: shows that Michel Richard is Roland's 9x great grandfather.

For Roland: I think I recall Chris saying recently that fixing these odd relationship calculator bugs was low priority right now, because at some point we will have the calculator that gives multiple connections between two people, which should make this problem obsolete.

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The multiple connections sounds great!

 I have found this same issue when using relationship funder on my Great Grandmothers as I just got my MTDNA test back and will get the relationship results through my father's tree.

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Hi Angela! I don't know how you came across this question, but you just commented on a 4-and-a-half-year-old discussion. So this problem has definitely been fixed! :) The relationship finder now shows the closest relationship, and then if you scroll down the page just a little bit there's a drop down box where you can see all the other relationships.

If you are experiencing a current bug with the relationship finder, I recommend starting a new G2G post about it, so that it will be seen by more people.

Answer 1

Thanks, Roland.

Lianne is right that this did come up in another conversation. When you have multiple relationships to a common ancestor, sometimes our calculator doesn't find the shortest one.

I think it's that it stops looking for a relationship that Person 2 has with an ancestor of Person 1 after it finds one. It might not find the first one because it's comparing one at a time as they're gathered, under the false assumption that Person 2 would only have one relationship to any given ancestor of Person 1.

In our next round of improvements to the relationship calculator, we were planning to show second and third relationships between Person 1 and Person 2. However, now that I look closely at this situation, I'm realizing that it won't be enough.

The problem isn't just that the two people can have second and third (and fourth and fifth, etc.) common ancestors. Each person can also have second and third (and fourth, etc.) relationships to the first common ancestor, and to the second common ancestor, etc. Egads!

All these relationships are important because our goal isn't just to have a tool that names the relationship. We want this to be a tool for DNA analysis, to help you discover why Person 1 and Person 2 share a segment of DNA. It may not be through their first common ancestor (or through their first relationship to the first common ancestor!).