Today is the birthday of John Venn, the person who first introduced the Venn diagram, and Google is celebrating the day with one of their inventive Doodles. Venn was an English logician and Philosopher, who’s diagram is used in many scientific fields like set theory, probability, logic, and secondary school math classes. It has also become very popular for generating memes.
Venn had originally began his life as an Anglican priest, although he later left the clergy when he decided that it was incompatible with his philosophical beliefs. In the same year he elected as a Fellow of the The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge. He introduced the Venn diagram to the world in 1880 to show possible logical relations between a finite collection of two sets. Notably, Venn had originally called his diagrams Eulerian Circles.
Google has also released a blog post about the process that went into making today’s Doodle. It provides an interesting insight into how the team comes up with Doodles and the thought process that goes into fleshing out the initial idea. Sketches from the planning stages are also shown for those interested in that sort of thing. The story is worth checking out, and the Doodle is worth wasting more than a few minutes messing around with.
