Likelihood Models for Forensic Genealogy

Abstract

In the idealized Morgan model of crossover, we study the probability distributions of shared DNA (identical by descent) between individuals having a wide range of relationships (not just lineal descendants), especially cases for which previous work produces inaccurate results. Using Monte Carlo simulation, we show that a particular, complicated functional form with just one continuous fitted parameter accurately approximates the distributions in all cases tried. Analysis of that functional form shows that it is close to a normal distribution, not in shared fraction f, but in the square-root of f. We describe a multivariate normal model in this variable for use as a practical framework for several general tasks in forensic genealogy that are currently done by less-accurate and less well-founded methods.