How does connections work?

Question

​​How does the  connectors work? Does it work separate from Relationships? I tried both with Kevin Sweet-3150 and myself Dolman-113. We have no connections but according to Relationships we are  6th cousins. Why isn't Mary (Dolman-245) the common ancestor?  Please speak in layman's terms. Here is our relationship. Thanks ahead of time for any responses.

 

Jerry and Kevin are 6th cousins

Jerry Dolman and Kevin Sweet are both descendants of Jonathan Dolman.

1. Jerry is the son of Howard Dolman [confident]
2. Howard is the son of Thomas Dolman [confident]
3. Thomas is the son of Thomas Dolman [unknown confidence]
4. Thomas is the son of Thomas Dolman [confident]
5. Thomas is the son of Charles Dolman [unknown confidence]
6. Charles is the son of Thomas Dolman [unknown confidence]
7. Thomas is the son of Jonathan Dolman [confident]
<!-- it's the last --> This makes Jonathan the fifth great grandfather of Jerry.

1. Kevin is the son of Colin Sweet [unknown confidence]
2. Colin is the son of James Emanuel Sweet [unknown confidence]
3. Jim is the son of Daniel Sweet [unknown confidence]
4. Daniel is the son of William Sweet [unknown confidence]
5. William is the son of John Sweet [unknown confidence]
6. John is the son of Mary (Dolman) Sweet [unknown confidence]
7. Mary is the daughter of Jonathan Dolman [confident]
<!-- it's the last --> This makes Jonathan the fifth great grandfather of Kevin.

Answer 1

You guessed right, Jerry. Connection Finder and Relationship Finder are separate, and they work differently.

Connection Finder looks at the connection steps between people. These can be parent-child connections, sibling connections, or marriages. It finds the connection path that has the fewest number of steps. Because of the large number of possible connections, this makes intensive use of computer resources, so it only calculates out to 10 steps when you ask it to find a connection. You connection with your 6th cousin is about 14 steps, when you count up and down the family lines, so Connection Finder doesn't find it.

The connections to the 4 connection targets on the bottoms of most profiles are precalculated in a major batch-processing job.

Answer 2

Connections include marriage connections in addition to blood connections.  The  marriage connections are also used in making connections for our one world tree.  If you're looking at the connections to Kevin Bacon or one of the other people who appear at the bottom of a profile, marriages will also be used.  But if you're looking at your connection to a US President, it will not consider marriages as the assumption is that you want to know if there's an actual blood relationship.