What is john venn famous for

John venn diagram
John venn wife
Where was john venn born

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Quick Info

Born

4 August 1834
Hull, England

Died

4 April 1923
Cambridge, England

Summary

John Venn was an English mathematician and logician best known for the Venn diagrams which can be used to visualise the unions and intersections of sets.

Biography

John Venn's mother, Martha Sykes, came from Swanland near Hull and died while he was still quite a young boy. His father was the Rev Henry Venn who, at the time of John's birth, was the rector of the parish of Drypool, near Hull. The Rev Henry Venn, himself a fellow of Queen's, was from a family of distinction. His father, John's grandfather, was the Rev John Venn who had been the rector of Clapham in south London. He became the leader of the Clapham Sect, a group of evangelical Christians centred on his church. They successfully campaigned for the abolition of slavery, advocated prison reform and the prevention of cruel sports, and supported missionary work abroad.

It was not only Venn's grandfather who played a prominent role in the evangelical Christian movement, for so did his father the Rev Henry Ven

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Venn diagram

Diagram that shows all possible logical relations between a collection of sets

A Venn diagram is a widely used diagram style that shows the logical relation between sets, popularized by John Venn (1834–1923) in the 1880s. The diagrams are used to teach elementary set theory, and to illustrate simple set relationships in probability, logic, statistics, linguistics and computer science. A Venn diagram uses simple closed curves drawn on a plane to represent sets. Very often, these curves are circles or ellipses.

Similar ideas had been proposed before Venn such as by Christian Weise in 1712 (Nucleus Logicoe Wiesianoe) and Leonhard Euler (Letters to a German Princess) in 1768. The idea was popularised by Venn in Symbolic Logic, Chapter V "Diagrammatic Representation", published in 1881.

Details

A Venn diagram, also called a set diagram or logic diagram, shows all possible logical relations between a finite collection of different sets. These diagrams depict elements as points in the plane, and sets as regions inside closed curves. A Venn di

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John Venn

English logician and philosopher (1834–1923)

For other people named John Venn, see John Venn (disambiguation).

John Venn, FRS,^[2]^[3]FSA^[4] (4 August 1834 – 4 April 1923) was an English mathematician, logician and philosopher noted for introducing Venn diagrams, which are used in logic, set theory, probability, statistics, and computer science. In 1866, Venn published The Logic of Chance, a groundbreaking book which espoused the frequency theory of probability, arguing that probability should be determined by how often something is forecast to occur as opposed to "educated" assumptions. Venn then further developed George Boole's theories in the 1881 work Symbolic Logic, where he highlighted what would become known as Venn diagrams.

Early life

John Venn was born on 4 August 1834 in Kingston upon Hull, Yorkshire,^[5] to Martha Sykes and Rev. Henry Venn, who was the rector of the parish of Drypool. His mother died when he was three years old.^[6] Venn was descended from a long line of church evangeli