John Venn and the Venn diagrams
John Archibald Venn (Source: Wikipedia) Recently, the British Prime Minister, referred memorably by Hugh Grant as the “over-promoted rubber bath toy”, allegedly used a Venn diagram in order to pick his ministers. Apparently, he tried to find the set of Tory MPs who were pro Brexit and also had some measure of competence. Rumour has it that he wound up with a null result. Anyway, this reminded me that we had been first introduced to Venn diagrams by Mr Pathrose, our mathematics teacher at Don Bosco School. Ancient civilisations which used mathematics out of intellectual curiosity or to solve practical problems invented the use of diagrams in mathematics. Hindus, Greeks, Chinese, Egyptians all used diagrams in mathematics, Leonardo da Vinci is often considered the person who really made them an art form in the fifteenth century. The use of numbers and categories gave rise to a necessity to categorise them and to represent their relationships. This was made possible by the Venn Dia...