What is Venn and the Art of Set Maintenance?

Venn and the Art of Set Maintenance is a tool for comparing two sets using the gamut of set comparisons on two sets. A helpful Venn diagram in the center describes which items are selected from each set and the selected items are listed in the Join section at the bottom. The Venn diagram can be clicked/tapped/kicked to cycle through the various set operations.

What’s Up with the Name?

Venn and the Art of Set Maintenance is a play on John Venn, after which the Venn diagram is named, and the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values.

Interface

The Left Set text box allows the entry of the “left” set and shows how many items are present. It stores the under-the-hood as a real set, so duplicates are not counted.

Left Set text box

Conversly, the Right Set text box allows the entry of the “right” set and also shows how many items are present in the set.

Right Set text box

The Venn diagram control indicates which set comparison is being used and can be clicked/tapped to cycle through the set comparisons. Additionally, it shows some human-readible text indicating how the sets are compared.

Venn diagram control

Finally, the Join section is the output of the set operation performed on both sets. It has a handy copy button to copy the output to the clipboard.

Join ouptut section

Examples

Given a left set of one, two, three, four and a right set of two, four, six, eight, the output for each set comparison is as follows:

Every item that is in both sets.

two, four

Every item in the left set.

one, two, three, four

Every item in the left set that is not in the right set.

one, three

Every item in the right set.

two, four, six, eight

Every item in the right set that is not in the left set.

six, eight

Items in the left and right sets that are not in both sets.

one, three, six, eight