Exact and Approximate Area-Proportional Circular Venn and Euler Diagrams

— Scientists conducting microarray and other experiments use circular Venn and Euler diagrams to analyze and illustrate their results. As one solution to this problem, this article introduces a statistical model for fitting area-proportional Venn and Euler diagrams to observed data. The statistical model outlined in this report includes a statistical loss function and a minimization procedure that enables formal estimation of the Venn/Euler area-proportional model for the first time. A significance test of the null hypothesis is computed for the solution. Residuals from the model are available for inspection. As a result, this algorithm can be used for both exploration and inference on real datasets. A Java program implementing this algorithm is available under the Mozilla Public License. An R function venneuler() is available as a package in CRAN and a plugin is available in Cytoscape.

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2012
• Where: TVCG
• Authors: Leland Wilkinson
• Keywords: Hardware, Minimization Procedure, Null Hypothesis, TVCG 2012, Venn Euler