Lesson 7: Going Deeper — More Tools, More Services

Pick one or all three · What you'll have at the end: more data, more clusters, and a feel for the full Autosomal toolbox.

You've got the core loop down. This lesson is a menu of three ways to widen it — do whichever fits your research (or all three).

1. Lower your cM threshold

Your database currently stops at 30 cM. Run another gather at 20 cM, then 15 cM or lower on later passes. Each pass only fetches what's new, and each one pulls in more distant cousins — which means more members in your mystery clusters, and more trees to compare when hunting a brick-wall ancestor. Expect longer runtimes at lower thresholds; the strategy notes in Tips & Tactics help you pick a floor that matches your goals.

2. Add a second service

Different cousins tested with different companies — each service you add reveals matches the others simply don't have. If you've uploaded your DNA (or tested) elsewhere, run the Lesson 2 + Lesson 4 pattern there: 23andMe, FTDNA, or GEDmatch — GEDmatch is an especially good addition because it's a free upload site where testers from every company meet, with segment data included. Everything lands in the same local database.

3. Try the other clustering tools

CLM is one lens. The Autosomal toolbox has three more, each answering a slightly different question:

• Shared Clustering — a different clustering algorithm (by Jonathan Brecher) that shines at lower cM ranges, often teasing apart distant clusters CLM lumps together. Running both on the same kit and comparing is a genuinely useful exercise.
• Chromosome Matrix (CMA) — uses the segment data you gathered in Lesson 4 to show where on each chromosome your matches overlap — the visual way into triangulation (three people sharing the same segment inherited it from the same ancestor).
• Matches — you know it from Lesson 3, but with ICW and segment data loaded it now shows shared-match lists and a chromosome browser per match.