Beat the Y-DNA Learning Curve
If you are simply trying to understand your results and are new to Y-DNA, do not be intimidated by the haplogroup codes and terminology.
To stymie the flood of people who test Y-DNA and give up pursuing their research, I've created a set of short (10-30 min each), practical tutorials.
There are only two types of Y-DNA you need to roughly understand (Tutorial Part 3 below).
You don't need to know any of the haplogroup codes by heart, except maybe one or two that apply to you. You can always just look up any code you want on the YFull tree. At the top of the screen you can see the 'breadcrumbs' including the major, single-letter haplogroup code that the lineage descends from.
YouTube Tutorials
Got 10-30 minutes? Click to watch!
Part 2
Practical advice for learning about your haplogroup's origins from an unbiased source - your own reasoning.
Part 3
The most important concepts in Y-DNA: STRs and SNPs
Practical advice for understanding your Y-DNA
Part 5
Big jumps in an allele indicate a unique signature
Recognize them to help you find relatives near or distant
to learn to detect muddled deletion signatures
Case Study 1
Relationship predicted by shared rare STR allele confirmed by WGS
Big Y-700 had no coverage for this SNP
Case Study 2
STR alleles that are different between two men but both divergent from ancestral haplotype in the same direction
Case Study 3
Rigorous application of the process of elimination reduces the scope and false positive rate of your potential relatives
