Coverage Estimator
How to use the coverage tool
This tool helps estimate the proportion of an ancestor's DNA accounted for by their descendants.
More detailed information:
- The DNA Geek: A new coverage estimator at DNA Painter
- DNA Painter Blog: How to use the new DNA coverage tool
- Paul Woodbury at Legacy Tree Genealogists blog: Five ways to use the new Coverage Estimator tool at DNA Painter
Before you start you'll need:
- A person in your tree you're interested in estimating coverage for
- An understanding of which of this person's descendants have tested and where they fit into the person's tree
How to use:
- Set up your tree
- Import a GEDCOM (what's this?)
- Click the 'Load' button on the right and then click 'Import GEDCOM'
- Drag your GEDCOM file onto the dashed 'Drop a GEDCOM file here' box, or click on that box to browse your computer for the file
- Then type the first few letters of the name of the person you want to import
- A list of matching names will appear with birth/death years; click on the name of the person you want to import
- Or build manually
- Click on 'Enter coverage subject name here' and enter your ancestor's name. Then use 'add child' to add descendants
- To indicate that someone is deceased and unable to test, hover them in the tree, click Add/Edit Details and enter a death year (or check the 'deceased' box)
- Indicate which descendants have tested:
- Hover over anyone who has tested and click Mark as tested.
- Their node will then turn dark and will count towards the overall coverage calculation
- An estimated value for the amount of the root person's DNA that is covered by tested descendants will appear at the top left.
The percentages generated by this tool are estimates based on typical inheritance patterns.
Please note that accessing the full coverage of your ancestor's DNA requires that you have access to all tests and that they are in the same database. For more information please read Paul Woodbury's blog post.
Or close this window and build a tree manually
Load GEDCOM
Upload a GEDCOM (family tree) file here. Please note: this will *replace* anything you may have already entered for this tree.
Loading GEDCOM data. If you have a large file, this may take a little while
If you have any issues importing your family tree, I would be very grateful if you could email a copy to info@dnapainter.com for testing. Many thanks!
Sorry - there was a problem with your file. Either it wasn't a file the site can read, or there weren't any people in it.
Your file should be a GEDCOM file with the file extension '.ged' or '.gedcom'. Please check the file and try again, or if you think your file is fine, please feel free to email it to info@dnapainter.com
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This tool lets you estimate the proportion of an ancestor's DNA accounted for by their DNA-tested descendants as marked in a tree.
Estimated coverage will appear here once you enter the subject's name below and mark people in the tree who have tested.
You can also import a GEDCOM file or a file from WATO via the Load menu.
To indicate that someone is deceased and unable to test, hover over them in the tree, click Add/Edit Details and enter a death year.
The file you loaded was imported successfully
XTree deleted
XThis is an example tree. Create a new tree by clicking here
You are viewing this coverage tree in read-only mode. If you would like to make edits, please click Save and make a copy in your DNA Painter account first.
To import a GEDCOM (family tree) file into the Coverage tool, click 'Import GEDCOM' below and select your file. You can then select a person from the tree and the site will extract all their descendants.
(only text files downloaded from this tool will work!)
Or: browse for a tree data file saved from this tool
This is a text file; only a file downloaded from this tool or from WATO will work
This tree is being saved locally on your computer and will appear on this page unless you reset your browser. If you'd like to save this tree to your DNA Painter account, please sign in or register (free).
Note - if you empty your browser cache, this tree will be deleted.
Experimental: you can save an image of this tree. The results may vary according to your browser. For the best results, try to maximize the size of the window before clicking this button. This feature works best in the Chrome, Firefox and Safari browsers.
You can also download the data for this tree locally and load it back into the tool later (or send it to someone else so they can load it in).
To do this, click the button below.
You can delete this tree. This action cannot be undone
Hover over a person for options. Scroll to the right to see children.
About this tool
This tool was adapted from the What are the Odds? codebase. It was developed by Jonny Perl and conceived with Paul Woodbury and Leah Larkin.
© DNA Painter 2022
Caveats
- The coverage percentages generated by this tool are based on regular inheritance patterns (for example, you might expect to inherit about 25% of a grandparent's DNA). In practice, the actual amount inherited may be higher or lower than this, so the output from this tool is a guide only and is not absolute.
- If one or more testers are related more than once to the person for whom you're estimating coverage, they should be entered into the tree and marked as testers multiple times.
More information
- The DNA Geek: A new coverage estimator at DNA Painter
- DNA Painter Blog: How to use the new DNA coverage tool
- Paul Woodbury at Legacy Tree Genealogists blog: Five ways to use the new Coverage Estimator tool at DNA Painter
Credits
Paul and Leah came up with the calculations and Jonny implemented them in JavaScript and made the tool.
The static tree layout was adapted from an example by Peiwen Lu.