Venn diagrams are an interesting method for rendering triadic relations on a two dimensional drawing surface. Certain marks (or annotations) indicate the existence of variables or constants in the distinguishable regions.
The PHIL 1500 - Logic and Critical Thinking course covers two chapters in the textbook on these diagrams. Implementing interactive venn diagramming exercises, as a teaching aide, was adopted by the defeasible graph group as viable ground for java experimentation.

Using java we are able to deliver this diagrammatic function via the existing library and computer lab workstations running available web browsers.

There are 3 example sets of exercises currently defined :

  1. One,...,
  2. Four, and
  3. Five
We are currently working on methods to ease the creation of exercise sets. If you are interested in working on the source code, please refresh your local copy, since it now has an AppletFrame class definition and takes a command line parameter for the codebase in html generation.
Take a look at the java source, or get the entire version 1.2 package in ZIP format, which solves some of the relative addressing issue mentioned below.

Notice that there are a few immediate venn exercise package considerations :

  1. change existing exercises to use relative addressing on codebase tags,
  2. have some installation / configuration for mailto: tag for comments and questions, and
  3. use relative addressing for references to venn and general class materials ...

The first consideration was certainly desirable and simply involved finger sweat over the existing exercises (or a fancy sed script;). The second consideration is a tad more involved since a professor will either want to answer the questions directly, or assign that to the graduate student, teaching assistant, or lab person each year, semester, or quarter as appropriate. Needless to say the install / maintenance tool has not been completed. The last consideration was decided on general principles of portability . . .

From SMTP discussions

from the following contributors :

SourceForge Logo This project is now at source forge !!!
The display of the sourceforge logo serves two purposes. First, it drives traffic to our host SourceForge and ultimately back to other Open Source projects. SourceForge has a lot of potential for "cross linking" many Open Source projects, and the logo display facilitates this.

Last modified Comments and suggestions : Return to Dr. Nute's
08/15/01 bancroft@ai.uga.edu
 venn diagramming
 class materials.