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Venn diagrams are illustrations used in the branch of mathematics known as set theory. They show all of the possible mathematical or logical relationships between sets (groups of things).

Contents 1 Origins 2 Examples 3 Extensions to higher numbers of sets 3.1 Simple Symmetric Venn Diagrams 3.2 Edwards' Venn diagrams 3.3 Other diagrams 4 Classroom use 5 See also 6 Notes 7 References 8 External links 8.1 Tools for making Venn Diagrams

The Hull-born British philosopher and mathematician John Venn (1834-1923) introduced the Venn diagram in 1881.

A stained glass window in Caius College, Cambridge, where Venn studied and spent most of his life, commemorates him and represents a Venn diagram.

The orange circle (set A) might represent, for example, all living creatures that are two-legged. The blue circle, (set B) might represent living creatures that can fly. The area where the blue and orange circles overlap (called the intersection) contains all living creatures that can fly and that have two legs — for example, parrots. (Imagine each separate type of creature as a point somewhere in the diagram.)

Humans and penguins would be in the orange circle, in the part which does not overlap with the blue circle. Mosquitoes have six legs, and fly, so the point for mosquitoes would be in the part of the blue circle which does not overlap with the orange one. Things which do not have two legs and cannot fly (for example, whales and rattlesnakes) would all be represented by points outside both circles. Technically, the Venn diagram above can be interpreted as "the relationships of set A and set B that may have some (but not all) elements in common".

The combined area of sets A and B is called the union of sets A and B. The union in this case contains all things that either have two legs, or which fly, or both.

The area in both A and B, where the two sets overlap, is defined as A∩B, that is, A intersected with B. The intersection of the two sets is not empty, because the circles overlap, i.e. there are creatures that are in both the orange and blue circles.

Sometimes a rectangle called the "Universal set" is drawn around the Venn diagram to show the space of all possible things. As mentioned above, a whale would be represented by a point that is not in the union, but is in the Universe (of living creatures, or of all things, depending on how one chose to define the Universe for a particular diagram).

Venn diagrams typically have three sets. Venn was keen to find symmetrical figures…elegant in themselves representing higher numbers of sets and he devised a four set diagram using ellipses. He also gave a construction for Venn diagrams with any number of curves, where each successive curve is interleaved with previous curves, starting with the 3-circle diagram.

D. W. Henderson showed in 1963 that the existence of an n-Venn diagram with n-fold rotational symmetry implied that n was prime.^[1] He also showed that such symmetric Venn diagrams exist when n is 5 or 7. In 2002 Peter Hamburger found symmetric Venn diagrams for n = 11 and in 2003, Griggs, Killian, and Savage showed that symmetric Venn diagrams exist for all other primes. Thus symmetric Venn diagrams exist if and only if n is a prime number.^[2]

Edwards' Venn diagram of three sets	Edwards' Venn diagram of four sets
Edwards' Venn diagram of five sets	Edwards' Venn diagram of six sets

A. W. F. Edwards gave a construction to higher numbers of sets that features some symmetries. His construction is achieved by projecting the Venn diagram onto a sphere. Three sets can be easily represented by taking three hemispheres at right angles (x≥0, y≥0 and z≥0). A fourth set can be represented by taking a curve similar to the seam on a tennis ball which winds up and down around the equator. The resulting sets can then be projected back to the plane to give cogwheel diagrams with increasing numbers of teeth. These diagrams were devised while designing a stained-glass window in memoriam to Venn.

Edwards' Venn diagrams are topologically equivalent to diagrams devised by Branko Grünbaum which were based around intersecting polygons with increasing numbers of sides. They are also 2-dimensional representations of hypercubes.

Smith devised similar n-set diagrams using sine curves with equations y=sin(2ⁱx)/2ⁱ, 0≤i≤n-2.

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (a.k.a. Lewis Carroll) devised a five set diagram.

Venn diagrams are often used by teachers in the classroom as a mechanism to help students compare and contrast two items. Characteristics are listed in each section of the diagram, with shared characteristics listed in the overlapping section.

In Indian schools the basic Venn diagrams are taught using coins.^{[citation needed]}

• Boolean algebra (logic)
• Carroll diagram
• Diagram
• Euler diagram
• Graphic organizers
• Mrs. Miniver's problem
• Spider diagram
• Bubble map
• Double bubble map

1. ^ D. W. Henderson, "Venn diagrams for more than four classes". American Mathematical Monthly, 70 (1963) 424–426.
2. ^ Ruskey, Frank; Carla D. Savage, and Stan Wagon (December 2006). "The Search for Simple Symmetric Venn Diagrams" (PDF). Notices of the AMS 53 (11): 1304-1311. Retrieved on 2007-04-27. 

• A Survey of Venn Diagrams by F. Ruskey and M. Weston, is an extensive site with much recent research and many beautiful figures.
• I. Stewart Another Fine Math You've Got Me Into 1992 ch4
• A.W.F. Edwards. Cogwheels of the Mind: the story of Venn diagrams, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London, 2004.
  • Review of Cogwheels of the Mind
• "Venn Diagram Survey: Symmetric Diagrams", The Electronic Journal of Combinatorics, June 2005).
• John Venn (1880). "On the Diagrammatic and Mechanical Representation of Propositions and Reasonings". Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science 9 (59): 1--18. 

• What is a Venn diagram?, from the survey page (below).
• LogicTutorial.com - interactive Johnston diagram
• Lewis Carroll's Logic Game — Venn vs. Euler at cut-the-knot
• A Survey of Venn Diagrams

• ConceptDraw
• SmartDraw
• Microsoft PowerPoint
• Venn Diagram - Flash Template
• VennDiagrams on SourceForge
• Winvenn
• DrawVenn
• 3 Circle Venn Diagram Applet
• "Venny" An interactive tool to compare up to 4 lists with Venn diagrams