The Hellinger distance as used for the representation of serological ABO distances among earlier human populations

The Hellinger (arccos) distance is examined for the purpose of demonstrating to what extent it represents the differences among populations. When the Hellinger distance is employed to estimate gene frequencies, a result very similar to that of the maximum likelihood (Bernstein) method can be gained. It is pointed out that in palaeoserological examinations the Dobson/Ikin method usually mentioned as Fisher method is not equivalent to the Bernstein method.