https://vennyd.com/examples/ Famous Venn diagrams drawn to scale by VennyD, each one open to edit. en Sat, 10 Oct 2026 15:18:53 GMT https://vennyd.com/examples/good-fast-cheap/ https://vennyd.com/examples/good-fast-cheap/ The old shop sign. Fast, good, cheap, pick two. The sign hung in print shops and repair shops long before software people started quoting it. Project management calls the same idea the iron triangle, with scope, time and cost at the corners. https://vennyd.com/examples/data-science/ https://vennyd.com/examples/data-science/ Drew Conway, 2010. Drew Conway posted this on his blog in 2010, after a meeting where nobody could agree on what a data science course should teach. His three circles were hacking skills, maths and statistics knowledge, and substantive expertise, with data science in the middle. It has been redrawn in talks ever since. https://vennyd.com/examples/even-and-prime/ https://vennyd.com/examples/even-and-prime/ The one from the maths lesson. Only 2 is in both. One circle for the even numbers, one for the primes, and the question of what goes in the middle. Only 2. Every other even number divides by 2, so it cannot be prime. https://vennyd.com/examples/nato-eu-g20/ https://vennyd.com/examples/nato-eu-g20/ Three memberships. Three countries in all of them. Thirty-two countries are in NATO, 27 in the European Union, and 19 countries sit at the G20 alongside the EU and the African Union. Twenty-three are in both NATO and the EU. Seven are in NATO and the G20. France, Germany and Italy are in all three. https://vennyd.com/examples/venn-1880/ https://vennyd.com/examples/venn-1880/ The original. John Venn published it in July 1880, in the Philosophical Magazine, in a paper on the diagrammatic and mechanical representation of propositions and reasonings. Three circles for three classes, overlapping so that every combination has a region of its own. He shaded the regions a proposition ruled out. https://vennyd.com/examples/rectangles-and-rhombuses/ https://vennyd.com/examples/rectangles-and-rhombuses/ Both at once is a square. A rectangle has four right angles. A rhombus has four equal sides. A shape with both is a square, so squares sit in the overlap and nowhere else. Geometry lessons draw this one to show that an overlap can be a definition, not a count. https://vennyd.com/examples/platypus/ https://vennyd.com/examples/platypus/ A mammal that lays eggs. Mammals in one circle, egg-layers in another, and the platypus in the middle. The echidna keeps it company. Both are Australian, which is where the third circle comes from. https://vennyd.com/examples/tpack/ https://vennyd.com/examples/tpack/ What a teacher needs to know, in three circles. Mishra and Koehler, 2006. Punya Mishra and Matthew Koehler published the framework in 2006, in Teachers College Record, after five years of watching teachers learn to teach with technology. Content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge and technological knowledge are the circles. Each pair has a name, and the middle, where all three meet, is TPACK. https://vennyd.com/examples/hedgehog/ https://vennyd.com/examples/hedgehog/ Three questions a company should be able to answer with one idea. Jim Collins borrowed the hedgehog from Isaiah Berlin, who borrowed it from the Greeks. The fox knows many things, the hedgehog knows one big thing. In Good to Great, published in 2001, the one big thing lives where three circles meet: what you are deeply passionate about, what you can be the best in the world at, and what best drives your economic engine. https://vennyd.com/examples/three-lenses/ https://vennyd.com/examples/three-lenses/ IDEO’s three lenses: do people want it, can it be built, does it pay. IDEO’s way of asking whether an idea is worth making. Desirability is the human lens: does anyone want it. Feasibility is the technical lens: can it be built. Viability is the business lens: can it pay for itself. An idea that passes all three sits in the middle. https://vennyd.com/examples/evidence-based-medicine/ https://vennyd.com/examples/evidence-based-medicine/ Research, the clinician and the patient, meeting in the middle. The three circles were drawn in 1996 by Brian Haynes and colleagues to show how research could be brought into the care of a patient. David Sackett and colleagues put it in words in 2000: the integration of best research evidence with clinical expertise and patient values. Any one of the three can override the others in a given case. https://vennyd.com/examples/three-pillars/ https://vennyd.com/examples/three-pillars/ Environment, society and economy, from a 1987 paper. The three overlapping circles first appeared in a 1987 article by the economist Edward Barbier. Environmental, social and economic, with sustainable development where they meet. The literature has argued about the three dimensions ever since and still draws them this way. https://vennyd.com/examples/deck-of-cards/ https://vennyd.com/examples/deck-of-cards/ Red cards, hearts and face cards. Every number can be checked by hand. The probability lesson’s favourite. Twenty-six cards are red, 13 are hearts, 12 are face cards. Every heart is red, so the hearts circle sits inside the red one. Six face cards are red, three of them hearts. https://vennyd.com/examples/eu-and-schengen/ https://vennyd.com/examples/eu-and-schengen/ Two memberships people mix up. Not the same 27 countries. Twenty-seven countries are in the European Union. Twenty-nine are in the Schengen Area, with no passport checks between them. Twenty-five are in both. Ireland opted out of Schengen and Cyprus has not yet joined, which leaves two EU members outside it. Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland are in Schengen without being in the EU. https://vennyd.com/examples/triple-crown/ https://vennyd.com/examples/triple-crown/ An Oscar, an Emmy and a Tony. Twenty-four people have all three. An Academy Award, an Emmy and a Tony, all for acting. Helen Hayes was the first to hold all three, in 1953. Glenda Jackson was the most recent, in 2018. Twenty-four people have done it; three of them are named in the middle.