Male-line preference bias

Maven - I havent noticed this in my (nuttier) paths, but now that youve brought it up I'll keep an eye out to see if that might be the case. I'm also wondering if it's a surname weighting rather than a gender weighting.

I don't know how often Geni changes the code, but the entire first year I was on Geni it kept saying my straight-line paternal 20th great grandfather was a distant cousin. Based on that, I'd be very surprised if there's a male line bias.

i agree.. as long as the path is correct and it's not a pain in the butt to walk thru i don't see why it's such a big deal or who it goes thru.. the closest blood relation works fine for me at least it has so far... if there is a problem i 'm not seeing it.

My worst case so far was when my 7th great grandfather turned into my 7th great uncle. Which he "also" is. Ewwwwwwwww.

Umm - the Geni path was probably not the way I wanted to figure this out. :).

And eventually I got it to show the straight line.

I think the "wideness of the net cast" to find distant relationships is the latest enhancement.

Thanks for the input, Justin.

Some factors known to mess up the path:

1. Pending Merges
2. Zombie ancestors
3. Tree conflicts

If none of those are involved, it may be affected by (jury is out on this)

4. Close-cousin marriages
5. Serial marriages
6. Short multiple paths (*there* it defaults to the male line always, even when mixed or female is as, or more, direct)

I *have* got a number of those, because Northampton/Accomack was a very small gene pool with limited outside input.

Well, not *always* ;)

My father and step-father are distant cousins several different ways. (Of course, they both have Great Migration ancestry, and those people are always connected.)

The other day I was working on my step-father's ancestry. I usually ignore the path (too trivial) but I noticed it was routing my relationship through a longer female-line route instead of a shorter male-line route.

Probably just the luck of what's been recently cached. If I had refreshed the path, I imagine it would have found the shorter route.

I haven't seen *that* happen yet. :-)

What's bugging me about this is, I'm trying to trace the Benthall line (it goes way back and gets convoluted in a couple of places, what with male heirs dying off and the name being assumed by the mates of female heirs - happened a couple of times) and Geni isn't being very helpful.

Maven, I'm not trying to be a smart-ass here, but I'm confused as to what the actual problem is. I walked a Benthall/Burnell line and it seems like most of those profiles were recently added by you.
How is it that you are having trouble tracing the lines that you yourself have added?
And since your patrilineal ancestry goes back only to your 4th GGF, how is it that you even have to worry about a Male-line preference bias when you don't even have a deep Male-line available for the pathway generator to prefer? Just curious. No big whoop.

I see *you* got all the way to the head of the Burnells. :-)

Geni insists on identifying Daniel Benthall as my "8th great-uncle" (which he is), but his first wife, Elizabeth Gascoigne , is accurately shown as "7th great-grandfather's wife".

He's *both*, but Geni is prioritizing the indirect connection over the direct one - and the only reason I can find for that is that the indirect line is male-to-male-to-male (to female to male) - five steps, while the direct one is female-to-male-to-male - three steps.

I don't get a correct reading again until there have been six consecutive male-line linkages. Riddle me that!

I seem to have the opposite problem.
If I go to the profile for any of my known distant patrilineal GGF's, the pathway generator will show me any other path than the direct line to that person.
I have been told that this is because Geni prefers the shortest path, and that the thoroughly co-mingled families of my father's parents confuses the algorithm. But in the case I have described, what path could be shorter or more direct than the patriline?

A computer does not know what a patriline is. I do not know all the weightings for the calculating algorithm, particularly when the tree gets sense, and there is also some confusion in the messaging databases.

For example the messages pull from different tables when presenting descendants (I needed grand parents to teach me this one).

I really recommend the use of HistoryLink to provide the terminology, graphics, and analysis you might prefer. The relationship calculator is a terrific tool but it's a blunt instrument, with paths cached on the server for quick response, as an example.

I'm sure the day will come when Geni will be able to show varying paths. But for now use it for what it "can" do for you. For me, it opens up new lines to explore, and also gives me focal points to document, prove / disprove.

For "sense" read "dense."

I've had problems with HistoryLink also. Is there a way to select a particular ancestor you want to find ancestors of? (The Benthalls *never show up at all*.)

Wow get a load of THIS one:

Smart Hunt (Dunton) is your 7th great grandmother. (8 steps)

But her father:

William Dunton is your 6th cousin's husband's nephew's ex-wife's first cousin 7 times removed's husband's wife's third cousin's husband's grandfather's wife's granddaughter's husband.

Asswise up the wrong side of the tree, massive detour DOWN the wrong side, another MASSIVE detour through Missouri, Connecticut, Long Island and back to Connecticut, back to England, FINALLY get back to Virginia, and still more detours, finally arriving at the profile from the SIDE (via WIFE).

That's 44 steps in a path which should take only 9.

WHAT. THE. FLINK!?!!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

Maven, on History link you can set a "focus" person, so you might be able to create a circle graph for a Benthall.
(I select my father any time I make a circle graph, because I have had to disconnect from my matriline on Geni for various reasons, some which pertain to the Path Problem and some which do not.)

Maven - link the profile, I'll "walk the path" and inspect for server refresh etcetera. This is an advantage of the calculator BTW; inspecting results from two different people. I've been able to more easily find and resolve Geni tree errors from this method.

HistoryLink works for any Geni profile. We could make graphs for any public profile.

William Dunton

I eventually figured out how to Change Person in HistoryLink - the instructions *don't tell you* that you need the Geni number or full URL.

Better check his wife also: Elizabeth Dunton

re: 'I eventually figured out how to Change Person in HistoryLink - the instructions *don't tell you* that you need the Geni number or full URL' ... thanks for that, Maven! I just added a bit to the project overview which may help others.

I ran across a good example tonight. If Geni has a male-line bias, or at least if it is very strong, this guy should be my 3rd or 4th cousin 8 or 9 times removed: Rev. Jakob Haury. He and I belong to the same male line -- Hauri, Haury, Howery.

Instead, Geni is showing him as my 8th great uncle's first cousin's husband's great nephew. The Geni line goes through my father's mother, but that's the extent of the "bias" ;)

rvk, just click on refresh path tool

rvk - check for a new 'conflict' of parents along the path, too.

Little green circular thing next to a path

The refresh path circle has a time period attached to it. If the path has been refreshed recently, it will not show the option to recalculate it for a period of time (can't recall how long). Curators have a shorter time period for refreshing, so if you have a particular path, we might be able to refresh it where a user may not. I expect this is done as calculating a path is a very computationally expensive task, which is why it does it in the background.

Private User - Done
Salomon Zelig Mozes is rvk's fifth great grandfather.

I think the ability to recalculate (when the green circle shows next to the path) is on the order of a week -- I don't think it happens 'behind the scenes' at all, but only when you view the profile.

That is, when you view the profile, if there was no 'cached' path, Geni calculates one. If there is a cached path, that is shown; if the time since the last calculation is greater than XX (e.g. 1 week), then the icon next to the path is shown to allow a re-calculation.

Mike Stangel could confirm the interval and the behavior when he has a moment to do so.

What I meant by it being in the background was when you click the "How are you Related?" button or the refresh icon, it sends it to a background job, which will update the path when it completes and indicate at the top of the screen when the path is found if you've moved away from the profile.

i am not sure if i understand this correctly.

Salomon / Zelig de Groot

is my 5th g/grandfather but his wife is still 41 steps away from me. in other words, the shortest path from me to her is not shown.
the ´recalculate´ symbol is also missing in her case.

now if i would visit a random profile, how would i ever know if the calculated path would be the shortest path?
and would this path then become the 'cached' path?