full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Yaniv Erlich: How we're building the world's largest family tree


Unscramble the Blue Letters


So now you might ask: OK, but who does the hard work of migrating from places to places to form fleimais? Are these the males or the feeamls? We used our data to address this question, and at least in the last 300 years, we found that the liaeds do the hard work of migrating from places to places to form families. Now, these results are statistically significant, so you can take it as scientific fact that males are lazy.

(Laughter)

We can move from questions about demography and ask questions about hmuan health. For example, we can ask to what extent genetic variations account for differences in life span between individuals. pevirous studies alnyzaed the crtoloreain of longevity between tinws to address this qisouten. They estimated that the genetic variations aonccut for about a quarter of the differences in life span between individuals. But twins can be correlated due to so many reasons, including various environmental effects or a shared household. Large family teres give us the opportunity to analyze both close relatives, such as twins, all the way to distant relatives, even fourth cousins. This way we can build robust models that can tease apart the contribution of geteinc variations from environmental factors. We conducted this analysis using our data, and we found that genetic variations epxlian only 15 percent of the differences in life span between individuals. That is five years, on average. So genes matter less than what we thought before to life span. And I find it gaert news, because it means that our actions can matter more. Smoking, for example, determines 10 yraes of our life expectancy — twice as much as what gectiens determines.

Open Cloze


So now you might ask: OK, but who does the hard work of migrating from places to places to form ________? Are these the males or the _______? We used our data to address this question, and at least in the last 300 years, we found that the ______ do the hard work of migrating from places to places to form families. Now, these results are statistically significant, so you can take it as scientific fact that males are lazy.

(Laughter)

We can move from questions about demography and ask questions about _____ health. For example, we can ask to what extent genetic variations account for differences in life span between individuals. ________ studies ________ the ___________ of longevity between _____ to address this ________. They estimated that the genetic variations _______ for about a quarter of the differences in life span between individuals. But twins can be correlated due to so many reasons, including various environmental effects or a shared household. Large family _____ give us the opportunity to analyze both close relatives, such as twins, all the way to distant relatives, even fourth cousins. This way we can build robust models that can tease apart the contribution of _______ variations from environmental factors. We conducted this analysis using our data, and we found that genetic variations _______ only 15 percent of the differences in life span between individuals. That is five years, on average. So genes matter less than what we thought before to life span. And I find it _____ news, because it means that our actions can matter more. Smoking, for example, determines 10 _____ of our life expectancy — twice as much as what ________ determines.

Solution


  1. human
  2. previous
  3. ladies
  4. question
  5. trees
  6. correlation
  7. years
  8. genetics
  9. families
  10. explain
  11. twins
  12. analyzed
  13. females
  14. account
  15. great
  16. genetic

Original Text


So now you might ask: OK, but who does the hard work of migrating from places to places to form families? Are these the males or the females? We used our data to address this question, and at least in the last 300 years, we found that the ladies do the hard work of migrating from places to places to form families. Now, these results are statistically significant, so you can take it as scientific fact that males are lazy.

(Laughter)

We can move from questions about demography and ask questions about human health. For example, we can ask to what extent genetic variations account for differences in life span between individuals. Previous studies analyzed the correlation of longevity between twins to address this question. They estimated that the genetic variations account for about a quarter of the differences in life span between individuals. But twins can be correlated due to so many reasons, including various environmental effects or a shared household. Large family trees give us the opportunity to analyze both close relatives, such as twins, all the way to distant relatives, even fourth cousins. This way we can build robust models that can tease apart the contribution of genetic variations from environmental factors. We conducted this analysis using our data, and we found that genetic variations explain only 15 percent of the differences in life span between individuals. That is five years, on average. So genes matter less than what we thought before to life span. And I find it great news, because it means that our actions can matter more. Smoking, for example, determines 10 years of our life expectancy — twice as much as what genetics determines.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
uncle bernie 5
family trees 5
large family 5
genetic variations 4
life span 4
distant relatives 3
hard work 3
golden state 3
people typically 2
family history 2
fellow genealogists 2
genealogists document 2
family tree 2
error rate 2
previous studies 2
migration events 2
form families 2
variations account 2
state killer 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
large family trees 2
genetic variations account 2
golden state killer 2


Important Words


  1. account
  2. actions
  3. address
  4. analysis
  5. analyze
  6. analyzed
  7. average
  8. build
  9. close
  10. conducted
  11. contribution
  12. correlated
  13. correlation
  14. cousins
  15. data
  16. demography
  17. determines
  18. differences
  19. distant
  20. due
  21. effects
  22. environmental
  23. estimated
  24. expectancy
  25. explain
  26. extent
  27. fact
  28. factors
  29. families
  30. family
  31. females
  32. find
  33. form
  34. fourth
  35. genes
  36. genetic
  37. genetics
  38. give
  39. great
  40. hard
  41. health
  42. household
  43. human
  44. including
  45. individuals
  46. ladies
  47. large
  48. laughter
  49. lazy
  50. life
  51. longevity
  52. males
  53. matter
  54. means
  55. migrating
  56. models
  57. move
  58. news
  59. opportunity
  60. percent
  61. places
  62. previous
  63. quarter
  64. question
  65. questions
  66. reasons
  67. relatives
  68. results
  69. robust
  70. scientific
  71. shared
  72. significant
  73. smoking
  74. span
  75. statistically
  76. studies
  77. tease
  78. thought
  79. trees
  80. twins
  81. variations
  82. work
  83. years