Venn diagram? You can do better!

Today, let's talk about Venn diagrams and more importantly, what to use instead!

What is a Venn diagram?

A Venn diagram visualizes relationships between sets using overlapping circles to show shared and unique elements.

It typically looks like this:

Venn diagrams work well for 2 or 3 groups! But beyond that, they become unreadable.

The issue is combinatorial explosion: the number of combinations grows way too fast.

With more than three groups, the diagram quickly becomes a cluttered mess, making it impossible to extract meaningful insights:

A better option: Upset Plot

The UpSet Plot is a powerful alternative that scales well with many groups.

It has a bar chart at the top that shows the size of each group combination. Then the X-axis grid indicates which groups contribute to each bar.

It's much clearer than a cluttered Venn diagram! Take a moment to study the figure:

Origin & Implementation

The UpSet plot was introduced in 2014 and quickly gained traction.

You can build it using one of those tools:

• In R, use the {upsetR} package to build one. I even wrote an example in the R Graph Gallery.
• In Python, there's the UpSetPlot package (though I haven't used it personally).
• In JavaScript, you can use upsetjs.

And that's it for today!

I hope you discovered a new chart type and more importantly, that you'll get to use it someday! ☺️

All the best,
Yan