An ash tree would belong just in the left circle because it is just vegetation and not fictional. A dragon would sit in the right circle because it is mythical but not a plant. However, because an ent, like Treebeard in the Lord of the Rings, is both mythical and a plant he belongs in the intersection between the two circles.

That’s a pretty simple example but they can get a lot more complicated.

Yeah, we won’t dwell on that one.

We’ve established that Google have done their Venn right. With that in mind, here are three Venns that do it wrong followed up by our site’s own go at the diagram.

Mitt Romney + Venns = bad news for campaigning

Poor Mitt Romney, not only did the Republican candidate for the US presidency in 2012 inspire mockery with such talk of car elevators and“binders full of women” he also managed to trip up with the simple Venn format.

The Romney campaign treated the Venn more like a sort of sum, with the first circle as the promise, the intersection as the subtraction and the third circle as the result. It is almost endearing how someone could have got this so wrong in such a unique way.

Given the nature of Romney’s 2012 campaign included him changing his mind on a lot of previous positions, it turned out that the former Massachusetts governor was eminently Vennable himself. Upworthy created the Mitt, Venn and Now Tumblr to make the most of this fact.

People who can’t do what this diagram says

These Venns in New York City by smartphone case manufacturer Speckwere not a shining moment for commercial data visualisation. People who check the slot for quarters and people who don’t are mutually exclusive so nothing exists in the gap between the two.

Other Venn fails included mixing people who live in the city and people who live in the suburbs. Just, uh, no.

As Buzzfeed’s Copyranter reported at the time, Speck pretty much shrugged off the inaccuracy of their Venns tweeting in reply to a complaint “We’re just trying to have a little fun ;)”.

Prostitutes, Doctors and TSA agents: more in common than you think

This Venn visualisation purporting to show the overlaps between medical professionals, sex workers and airport security – i.e they all get paid to touch your genitals, was big on Reddit a couple of years ago.

Except this great blog post by Andrew Plotkin shows how this is just not a Venn at all. In the “Make more per hour than you do all day” section all the properties of prostitutes and doctors have to overlap, which means that overlap is referring to sex workers with medical degrees. If any of these unique hybrids exist they will probably earn more than most of us but it seems a pretty niche field.

While it cannot be denied that a transport agent trained as a doctor and doing some side work as a prostitute would undoubtedly be paid to touch your junk, not so many of those exist and that fact also kills the visual joke a bit – sorry.

Our go at a Venn: Hull: the ultimate Venn Diagram

Late last year it was announced that Hull, the home of John Venn, was to be the next UK city of culture. At the time, we thought what better tribute to the northern city than using the famous visualisation technique.

This visualisation by Emily Wilson and Mona Chalabi gets the format right, does not use mutually exclusive categories and does not confuse traits with properties. It’s also about Hull, which is the city that most deserves to get a Venn in the world.