Thursday 17 February 2011

Homeopathy Venn Diagram Demographic Analysis

Following on from yesterday's leaked email from a panicked homeopathy administrator, I have now got hold of a leaked document from Boots marketing department who have cunningly used a Venn diagram to analyse the demographic of their potential homeopathy customers.
POSTSCRIPT:

OK, OK, I try and make a quick gag, and I get inundated by pedants complaining about the accuracy of the diagram. I should have known better. The following diagram is hopefully more accurate, although originally rejected as I was only really interested in the comic effect, and after all that's all Venn diagram's are really used for isn't it?
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15 comments:

  1. Anonymous17 February 2011 at 22:31

    (A^C)'s gotta be pretty darn small... I'd hope ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Crispian Jago17 February 2011 at 22:47

    Yeah, I know, technically the diagram is not really right. As pointed out by @rbhinkley on twitter, it would have been better to have not overlapped C, but just shaded it all in. However, I opted for aesthetics over accuracy.

    Should have known better with you pedants.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous17 February 2011 at 22:59

    I think it was the right choice too... it's in the spirit of all good comedy venn diagrams, and that's important!

    ... but you know, minor technical inaccuracies are to a skeptic what a red-rag is to a bull ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Daniel Pope17 February 2011 at 23:36

    Also you've written (scuse lack of Unicode conjunction/disjunction characters - don't have special character input on my phone)

    (A n B) n C

    when I think you mean

    (A n B) u C

    ReplyDelete
  5. Crispian Jago17 February 2011 at 23:46

    Bloody pedants. Happy now Pope?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous18 February 2011 at 10:12

    Not happy!

    (Using u and n for ease of typing)

    u = Union = All of one and All of the other

    n = Intersection = the area where the two meet.

    Your diagram shades simply A n B -> the bit that is in A and B.

    If you truly mean ( A n B ) u C then you must shade all of circle C as the expression means, all of C, plus the bit that's in both A and B.

    Wikipedia may help http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_(mathematics)

    HTH
    N0Sheds

    ReplyDelete
  7. Crispian Jago18 February 2011 at 10:16

    FFS N0Sheds.

    I am aware the diagram does not match the formula. The formula is correct, but the diagram is deliberately wrong for the purposes of comic effect, although I don't know why I bother some times.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Anonymous18 February 2011 at 10:34

    Whoosh.....

    That was the sound of that particular comic effect flying right over the top of my head....

    And you didn't mention it to the other pedants either, so please sir, may I be excused for having not noticed it? :-)


    N0Sheds
    (i.e. The set of "Sheds in My Possession" is the empty set)

    ReplyDelete
  9. Dave C18 February 2011 at 11:26

    Anonymous said, "minor technical inaccuracies are to a skeptic what a red-rag is to a bull".
    Shirley that should read "waving any coloured rag" because as we skeptics know, bulls are colour blind and react to the movement.

    You gotta love Venn diagram jokes :-)

    ReplyDelete
  10. Anonymous18 February 2011 at 12:07

    If 10²³@QED was anything to go by, circle C is a subset of circle B.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Anonymous18 February 2011 at 12:16

    Bulls are not colour blind

    ReplyDelete
  12. Billysugger18 February 2011 at 13:01

    It must be Friday. Chill dudes!

    ReplyDelete
  13. Anonymous18 February 2011 at 13:05

    The first venn-diagramm would be symbolized with:

    (A n B) u ( A n B n C )

    Is it right?

    It's always bad to make fun of somebody when you're making faults along the way.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Anonymous22 February 2011 at 18:20

    I would think you need some kind of division of set C, since while C generally does not overlap with A or B, presumably at some point skeptics have participated in publicity stunts that don't involve taking shitloads of sugar pills *ahem* I mean highly efficacious medicines.

    (Thereby completely missing the point.)

    ReplyDelete
  15. Mitchell Gerskup23 February 2011 at 22:13

    A and C aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.

    ReplyDelete