THE ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF COMBINATORICS 4 (1997), DS#5.

A Survey of Venn Diagrams

Frank Ruskey
Department of Computer Science
University of Victoria
Victoria, B.C. V8W 3P6
CANADA

The purpose of these pages is to collect together various facts and figures about Venn diagrams, particularly as they relate to combinatorial properties of the diagrams. It is best viewed with a browser, such as Netscape or Internet Explorer, that supports tables, subscripts, and superscripts. A color monitor will also greatly increase your viewing pleasure! Aperiodic updates are planned and comments and suggestions are most welcome.

Organization

• Who was John Venn?
• What is a Venn diagram?
  • Formal definition of Venn diagrams
  • General constructions of Venn diagrams
• Graphs associated with Venn diagrams
  • The planar dual of a Venn diagram
  • How many Venn diagrams are there?
  • Extending Venn diagrams
• Symmetric Venn diagrams
  • Symmetric diagrams for small n
  • Venn diagrams and Gray codes
• Other variants of Venn diagrams.
• Open problems.
• References.
• Acknowledgements.
• Footnotes.

The icon to the left appears on all the following pages. Clicking on it will bring you back to this page.

The 7-fold rosette at the top of the page is a Venn diagram for n = 7, called "Victoria." Find out more about it by going to the page on symmetric Venn diagrams.

There are some Venn diagrams on the pages to follow that have not appeared before in the literature, in particular, most of the symmetric Venn diagrams for n=7.

All the Venn diagram figures to be found on the following pages, unless otherwise noted, are © Frank Ruskey.

Received: August 28, 1996.
Current edition: February 2, 1997.

THE ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF COMBINATORICS 4 (1997), DS #5.