Researchers tested the FBI CODIS Core STR set for informativeness for admixture analysis, as well as two other publicly available sets of loci. The latter sets are the 39 ancestry informative SNPs (Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms) from Mark Shriver's laboratory at Pennsylvania State University and a subset of 13 loci chosen from the 377 autosomal microsatellite loci from the HGDP-CEPH Human Genome Diversity Cell Line Panel. The basic question addressed was "How much information about an individual's ancestry may we anticipate from genotyping that individual for a set of genetic markers?" This question is addressed for three source populations: Africans, Europeans, and Native Americans. The materials and methods used in this research are described in detail in this article. The informativeness of each of the 3 sets of genetic markers was assessed for individuals with 16 different combinations of African, European, and Native American admixture. The analysis found that the FBI CODIS STR loci were not the most informative set of loci that could be used for admixture analysis compared with the two other sets of loci tested. The population specific information and determinants of the information matrix tended to be higher for the set of 39 Shriver SNPs than for the HGDP-CEPH panel, although the HGDP-CEPH selected markers were more informative than the Shriver SNP markers for some model populations; however, for all model population combinations, the expected population specific standard deviation was reasonably similar for both of these sets. The authors recommend using a combination of the 13 best markers from the HGDP-CEPH panel and the most informative SNPs from the Shriver panel. 3 tables and 25 references