Human beings love to categorize things. Just look at all the nouns we have to describe groups of things in many ways. Our ability to categorize objects evolves out of our mental ability to notice the differences and similarities between two objects. The somewhat unconscious application of this skill gives us a chance to mentally focus on and communicate about many things at once. 
There is a visually mathematical way of representing the concept. A “collection of well-defined and distinct objects” is referred to as a set (B,C). It’s like the collections of marbles within the white circle (A). Each of the objects within a given set is an element. We can express these collections as a rule which describes the attributes common to all elements of the set. Visually, we traditionally use circles or ellipses (I believe any closed shape can be used) to represent the relationships between multiple sets. The resulting diagram is commonly known as a Venn diagram (D). The rectangle enclosing the sets represents the universal set. We’ll explore the most common relationships between sets in a future blog….
Mathematics, like most subjects, is rich in terms and vocabulary. In many cases, there is some fascinating history behind the words we commonly use to express ourselves mathematically. For example, the Venn diagram is named after John Venn (1834-1923), a British logician and philosopher, and a fellow of the Royal Society. Among the many things he did during his life, he published three texts on the subject of logic and he introduced Venn diagrams in his second book Symbolic Logic (1881).
This work was uniquely commemorated in a stained glass window which is on display in the dining hall of his alma mater, Gonville and Caius College, a college in the University of Cambridge, England. Read about his life online and explore his accomplishments. You will find out that he, like most mathematicians, are interested in a variety of things.
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