BS: Venn Diagrams - WHY?

Subject: RE: BS: Venn Diagrams - WHY?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 21 Mar 04 - 09:52 AM

It sounds like a Venn diagram might be helpful to the management of the fabric store where I work. A customer pointed out that we have fabrics for babies and kids, fabric for male kids, but no fabric for female kids.

Subject: RE: BS: Venn Diagrams - WHY?
From: Peace
Date: 21 Mar 04 - 09:22 PM

1) Suggest the female kids have sex changes
2) Dress the kid funny
3) Give the female kid a Venn diagram to wear
4) Ask Venn

Subject: RE: BS: Venn Diagrams - WHY?
From: Peace
Date: 21 Mar 04 - 09:23 PM

Venn Diagrams - WHY?

So we can confuse by using pictures what we have confused by using words.

Subject: RE: BS: Venn Diagrams - WHY?
From: GUEST,noddy
Date: 22 Mar 04 - 04:10 AM

"All lipe shends are umty but are all umpty shends lipe"

This was a question from my maths book, it certainly made me think and understand Venn Diagrams.

PS Little Hawk I took special care typing this one......

Subject: RE: BS: Venn Diagrams - WHY?
From: Snuffy
Date: 22 Mar 04 - 09:56 AM

Kingston on Thames
Kingston on Hull
Kingston on Tario

Subject: RE: BS: Venn Diagrams - WHY?
From: Peace
Date: 22 Mar 04 - 12:18 PM

Dang, Snuffy, I just got it. HA HA

Read it twice before and wondered where the heck Tario was. LOL

Subject: RE: BS: Venn Diagrams - WHY?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 22 Mar 04 - 02:37 PM

Geoff, thanks for this thread! I knew how to use the diagram but didn't know what it was called. I was able to call on this new-found knowledge just today when writing to a different list.

You learn something new everyday--and as often as not, it's over here at Mudcat!

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Venn Diagrams - WHY?
From: Schantieman
Date: 22 Mar 04 - 04:51 PM

I say, I say, I say
My wife went to Kingston last week

Jamaica?

No - she went of her own accord.

;-)

S

Subject: RE: BS: Venn Diagrams - WHY?
From: Mr Red
Date: 23 Mar 04 - 01:47 PM

Leenia - Zwicky's Morphology would work better the fabric choices. It is more like a pile of kiddies blocks. Imagine the eastern side of each brick is written an age category. Any one vertical column of would have one age.
tot, kid, teen, twenty, married, ditto with kids, grandparents, silver sewers, dotage.
the north face of each brick could be gender, again same in coumns, differing from column to column.
male, female, androgenous, TV, neutral
and looking down the tops would bear the patterns
tartan, lines, paisley, floral, cloudy, geometrical, William Morris, etc

Now that pile of bricks has a brick for every combination of those groupings above.

This is just an aid to visualise a mathematical process in tangible imagers. But some of us see it better that way.

Yer venn diagram gets a bit difficult to complete combinations in more tha two dimensions. This at least works for three. After that you have to imagine multiple piles of bricks.

There could be mortar bricks than meets the eye......

Subject: RE: BS: Venn Diagrams - WHY?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 23 Mar 04 - 07:13 PM

We didn't have Modern Maths when I was at school. (So my equivalent question is "Why did I spend all that time learning to deal with simultaneous equations, when I've never used a simultanenous equation in the rest of my life?)

Perhaps if we could work out a way of using Venn diagrams here it could help in the "What is Folk" threads. Instead of ending up going round in a circle, we'd end up in going round in overlapping circles.

Which just set me thinking - couldn't they be a way of making circle dancing a lot more exciting?

Subject: RE: BS: Venn Diagrams - WHY?
From: Strick
Date: 23 Mar 04 - 07:26 PM

"(So my equivalent question is "Why did I spend all that time learning to deal with simultaneous equations, when I've never used a simultanenous equation in the rest of my life?)"

You DON'T use simultaneous equations anymore? I thought everybody did.

Subject: RE: BS: Venn Diagrams - WHY?
From: Amos
Date: 23 Mar 04 - 07:39 PM

Come, come!! How do you think you manage to get out of bed each morning? You think that's a single-value computation? Nononono!

A

Subject: RE: BS: Venn Diagrams - WHY?
From: Kaleea
Date: 24 Mar 04 - 03:09 AM

Surely we musn't forget the most important potential of the Venn Diagram--
a potential illustration/visual aid for the next radio address of Bubba"prez"bush.

   OR: an example given by Bubba"prez"bush in a recent speech in reference to the most often used forms of birth control in these modern times.

Subject: RE: BS: Venn Diagrams - WHY?
From: Mr Red
Date: 24 Mar 04 - 07:19 PM

you mean all those circles are an allegory on the coil?

Subject: RE: BS: Venn Diagrams - WHY?
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 24 Mar 04 - 07:54 PM

Sidetracking, but thinking of Amos' line (I'm not implying a set here just descision making), it can be interesting to say give instructions make a cup of tea. I mean for example that could include a loop something like "while water is not hot enough continue to apply heat". There is much we do naturally but take for granted. In that case we would all say wait till the kettle has boiled.

As for threads and sets, every post in this thread belongs to a group of posts but are only posts with an ID 679988. Few of us would ever think of the (say, pretty sure it is SQL Server here) SQL behind that when reading.

We are quite remarkable at using processes subconsciouly.

Subject: RE: BS: Venn Diagrams - WHY?
From: dianavan
Date: 24 Mar 04 - 08:32 PM

Venn diagrams are one way of organizing your thoughts and ideas but not all people think the same way. Some people prefer point form. I prefer making a web because that more accurately describes my thought process. Students should be exposed to all three methods (maybe more) and encouraged to use what works best for them.

d

Subject: RE: BS: Venn Diagrams - WHY?
From: GUEST,John Venn's sister
Date: 31 Mar 04 - 06:08 AM

Today's John Venn is a bloodsucking vulture. He locked his mother into an Altzheimer's ward so he can cash in on her savings. His sister Vicky Venn is forging checks to pay for the lawyer's fees to have her locked away eternally.

Subject: RE: BS: Venn Diagrams - WHY?
From: Donuel
Date: 31 Mar 04 - 07:06 AM

Well gee, we use them for federal goverment presentations !?

Subject: RE: BS: Venn Diagrams - WHY?
From: GUEST,Joerg
Date: 31 Mar 04 - 09:44 PM

Geoff -

To answer your question: Yes, as far as I know there is ONE practical application for Venn diagrams (BTW I seem to be older than you because I first was introduced to "Euler" diagrams and then learned that Venn diagrams were the same): The so-called KV (Karnaugh-Veitch, not sure about the spelling) diagrams. They can be used to convert - uhm - truth tables (?) into boolean expressions.

Since I neither know whether you are familiar with boolean algebra nor am sure about my english terminology let me give you an example:

Should you marry her? You have three inputs:

A: She is pretty. (1=yes, 0=no)
B: She is rich. (1=yes, 0=no)
C: You love her. (1=yes, 0=no)

You want to obtain one output:

D: You should marry her. (1=yes, 0=no)

Now you write down all possible input combinations as a table and assign an output to them at your will, for example:

ABC D
-----
000 0
001 1
010 0
011 1
100 0
101 1
110 1
111 1

If you are familiar with KV diagrams you can convert this to the boolean equation

D = (A and B) or C

In human words: You should marry her if she is pretty AND rich OR if you love her.

The boolean form is for example needed when you want to make an electronic circuit that gives you this advice or when you want to program the logical decision. The example I chose was once sold as a demo construction set for logical gates ("marriage indicator").

Enjoy

Joerg

Subject: RE: BS: Venn Diagrams - WHY?
From: Amos
Date: 01 Apr 04 - 01:23 AM

Experientially, that should be D= C AND (A or B) I believe...

A

Subject: RE: BS: Venn Diagrams - WHY?
From: dianavan
Date: 01 Apr 04 - 01:48 AM

I thought it was D = C AND (A or B)

Subject: RE: BS: Venn Diagrams - WHY?
From: GUEST,Joerg
Date: 01 Apr 04 - 08:38 PM

As I said - at your will. ;-D

Subject: RE: BS: Venn Diagrams - WHY?
From: GUEST,ET
Date: 28 Apr 04 - 05:04 PM

Venn Diagrams can now be used to help you see patterns in your database (if you have one) that you may not have know existed by just looking at tables.

If you go to http://www.setgraph.com/SearchDemo.htm you can add Venn diagrams to your Google searches for free and perhaps understand the benefits of Venns. This architecture is actually used by companies now to do things from profile customer buying habits, to stock screening, to identifying trends in their business.