So last night, I posted a bunch of miscellaneous thoughts, including my story of how I heard Nathan Sterner misusing the term “Venn diagram” and how that prompted me to donate to the pledge campaign.  Well, somewhere in the middle of the night as I was attempting to rock Mark back to sleep (skin-to-skin didn’t work last night, sadly), I had this sudden thought, “Oh no!  What if there’s an obscure variation of Venn that I don’t know about that actually works with his illustration?  I’d feel terribly silly!”

So this morning, I went back to the Wikipedia entry that I linked to yesterday and read it more thoroughly and discovered two things.

1. I’m right and Nathan’s wrong when it comes to Venns.
2. What he was describing is also a graphic organizer! It’s called a Euler diagram.

So I drew up a couple diagrams to help us all understand the issue.

First, a Venn, properly used, to describe WYPR listeners and members:

Second, a Euler, to illustrate Nathan’s point:

All clear now? 🙂 Class dismissed!