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How to Make Venn Diagrams in R

The usually abstract, qualitative and sometimes quantitative chart type shows relationships. You can make them in R, if you must.

A Venn diagram is typically used to illustrate a concept between two or more categories and their intersection. In this chart genre, you might be familiar with Drew Conway’s data science diagram:

Jessica Hagy uses them often in her index card series:

And there are plenty of other examples. I also wrote a guide for how to read them.

In any case, if you’re reading this, you probably know what a Venn diagram is already, so I won’t get into the background of it.

So, about making these things in R.

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About the Author

Nathan Yau is a statistician who works primarily with visualization. He earned his PhD in statistics from UCLA, is the author of two best-selling books — Data Points and Visualize This — and runs FlowingData. Introvert. Likes food. Likes beer.