And Now For Something Completely Different 7: XKCD-style Venn Diagrams

2Apr/133

And Now For Something Completely Different 7: XKCD-style Venn Diagrams

Update 03/04/2013: Chemjobber made a few!

Thanks to a recent xkcd comic I've just discovered a wonderfully concise new way to communicate – non-overlapping Venn Diagrams:

From http://xkcd.com/1180/

For example, here's a statement my boss made last week expounded thus:

I quite enjoy the contradiction between the visual simplicity of displaying information in this way and the fact that it's actually a lot more effort to construct these than write a sentence that conveys the same information, as well as their highly inefficient use of space. There's just something kind of amusing about them. Or I think so, anyway.

Give it a go, and share any good (chemistry related) ones you can think of in the comments. I've just put one in a talk I'm writing on acyclic stereocontrol for a group meeting; I'll let you know how that goes down next week!

Filed under: ANFSCD, Ask the audience Leave a comment

Comments (3) Trackbacks (0) ( subscribe to comments on this post )

Hadriel
April 2nd, 2013 - 22:21

The box must be present, else the set is not defined.

( REPLY )
- BRSM
  April 3rd, 2013 - 07:49
  
  I did not know that. Boxes will be added tonight!
  
  ( REPLY )
Berk
April 3rd, 2013 - 23:37

These are Euler diagrams, not Venn diagrams! According to some nerd.

( REPLY )

The Archives

Subscribe to BRSM by Email

All Time Most Popular

Conditions You’ll Probably Never be Desperate Enough to Try - 151,617 views
(-)-Acetylaranotin - 139,771 views
Drugs I Shan’t Be Taking This Week 1: 2,4-Dinitrophenol - 127,299 views
Woodward Wednesday 3: Chlorophyll a - 81,490 views
Unnatural Products 4: Tetrahedrane - 80,769 views
(-)-strychnine, (+)-aspidospermidine + 4 others - 68,547 views
Woodward Wednesdays 1: (+)-cephalosporin C (1966) - 64,376 views
The Best Thing Ever? - 62,931 views

Follow me on Twitter

My Tweets

B.R.S.M. Pain is temporary, publications are eternal