I’m impressed. Using a trademarked technique, SideView™, Ancestry is estimating the percentages of each ethnicity you inherited from each parent. It’s done based on segment analysis and comparison with your DNA matches; it does not identify which parent is associated with which estimate.
I was pleased to see that my Jewish ancestry was associated with only one parent, that’s something 23andMe got confused with when it originally assessed my father’s ethnic makeup from mine and my mother’s.
Ignoring small amounts of ethnicity where the error bar includes zero, my ethnic makeup is similar for England & Northwestern Europe, and for Scotland for both parents. For my father, Irish ethnicity accounts for about the same percent as my mother’s Jewish ethnicity. The SideView™ estimates for my mother (as I identify) from my DNA are reasonably consistent with the estimates from her DNA results at 23andMe.
I agree – its not actually bad! I had to do a lot of reading to remind myself what the regions actually were as my initial reaction was “what the heck”. Regions like Ireland and Scotland actually include the area of France my dad’s ancestors were from.
Once I got through all that, it correctly identified that my dad’s ancestry includes the Italian and my mum’s is the English ancestry. Very impressed for something that is solely AI based on not based off of actual testing!