1The concept of connectednessThe term“connectedness”is commonlyused in animal breeding in relation to the geneticevaluations and across herd comparison of esti-mated breeding values.In this context,connect-edness is a measure or accuracy of across herd e-valuations.It can be described as a measure ofthe relationships between herds or contemporarygroups based on their effect on the accuracy ofcomparing the genetic values of animals fromoneherd or group to the other.In true statistical sense,a data set is con...