

Touching Your Junk: An Ontological Complaint - aheilbut
http://eblong.com/zarf/thod/38.html

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forensic
It may not technically be a Venn Diagram but I still think it is a legitimate
way to represent something - and do it better than the author's alternatives.

You have to look at the chart differently but I don't think this makes it a
bad graphic.

Each intersection is a way of representing what the two intersecting groups
have in common, rather than demonstrating what the groups are.

The question is, "What do doctors and TSA agents have in common?" and the
answer goes in the intersecting region.

While not technically a Venn Diagram I think it is still a useful graphic.

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Retric
I disagree.

"Venn diagrams or set diagrams are diagrams that show all hypothetically
possible logical relations between a finite collection of sets"
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venn_diagram>

There is nothing wrong with showing Venn diagrams of property's of something.
It's really just another set.

PS: Numbers are abstract ideas not physical objects. So, Venn diagrams where
really designed to show relationships between ideas.

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Qz
This article takes something simple and elegant (if incorrectly labeled) and
turns it into a sad tortured example of how to get yourself picked on in high
school.

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benbeltran
This article takes something funny and turns it into an insightful article
without being a bitch about it (I found it quite humorous). You're all hating
too much.

~~~
amvp
I accidentally up-voted the GP, but I agree - it's well written, and makes a
fair point which I think isn't too pedantic. Although he mislabels
<http://eblong.com/zarf/pic/thod/venn-wtf.png> 'Strumpet MDs' and 'Medical
Security Guards', should be reversed.

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stcredzero
_I accidentally up-voted the GP_

Actually, that's perfect for a segue into epistemology.

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panacea
He's right though. Line diagrams as JPEGs _are_ annoying.

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steadicat
He complains about using JPEGs yet his PNGs are unreasonably large (60-120KB).
I compressed one of his 80KB images into 15KB just by re-saving it.

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angelbob
I suspect he doesn't care much about the storage space. JPEGs make the edges
of the lines blurry or noisy - they're designed for things like nature
photographs, not sharp hard edges between single-color areas.

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Fargren
It's not about storage space, is about loading time. When I read it through
the connection I have at work, it took about 2 minutes to load.

~~~
panacea
When it's JPG artifacts in an image best suited for PNG you blame the
publisher.

When it's slow loading times you blame the pipes and the piper.

Me? I blame three letter acronyms.

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jaekwon
The original image is a proper Venn Diagram if you think of the diagram
representing various properties of professions.

The only correction you need is to replace "Doctor" with "other properties of
doctors", etc, to be technically correct -- though i much prefer the original.

Nice post anyways

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kwantam
To this end: we can (WLOG) make the degenerate observation that a property of
all doctors is that they are doctors. Then the original chart just shorthands
away whatever conjugation of "to be" is proper in the outermost bubbles, and
does indeed map properties of the various groups.

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shasta
It's still not a Venn diagram. A Venn diagram labels regions, not points in
the regions. The diagram could be made correct by placing little dots in the
intersection regions to show that these are points in the intersection,
whereas the outermost categories are sets of properties. But it still wouldn't
really be a Venn diagram :)

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Bud
I laughed out loud at the bit about "probably something from Bruce Schneier".
Really funny stuff overall. If you didn't like this, you need to relax and
have more egg nog.

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niels_olson
> De Morgan's law. The union of two properties is the intersection of the sets
> of people who have those properties. (And vice versa.)

De Morgan's Law!!!!!!! I first learned about this in a Moore-method point-set
topology class in 1995, and I have been trying to remember the name of this
property since. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

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harshpotatoes
Is it weird that internet memes still manage to find a way here, albeit in a
roundabout manner?

~~~
stcredzero
Often, it's not so roundabout.

