Science history: The simple brilliance of Venn diagrams | Mathematics - Cosmos

British mathematician also had a love for cricket. Jeff Glorfeld, freelance journalist based in California, US. reports.
 

 John Venn made a contribution to maths and cricket.
Photo: Unknown (Maull & Fox. studio). Via Wikimedia

In late July 2019, Britain’s Evening Standard newspaper reported on how soon-to-be prime minister Boris Johnson had planned his Cabinet appointments by drawing a Venn diagram. In one circle were “the people who believed in Brexit”. In the other were “the people capable of running the country”.

In discussing Johnson’s planning scheme, The Guardian newspaper’s mathematics columnist, Alex Bellos, described the Venn diagram as “a brilliantly simple visual aid to understanding logical relations”, and “one of the few concepts from abstract mathematics that is easily understood, and regularly used, by non-mathematicians”.

The Venn diagram takes its name from British mathematician and logician John Venn, who was born in 1834 in Yorkshire. His father Henry Venn and grandfather John Venn were both Evangelical Anglican priests.

In 1853 he went to Cambridge to study mathematics, receiving a first-class degree in mathematics in 1857...

An online educational services provider, Lofoya.com, explains that a Venn diagram consists of closed shapes, generally circles, which represents sets. The various operations of sets are represented by partial or complete overlap of these closed figures. Regions of overlap represent elements that are shared by sets.  
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Source: Cosmos