Recently stumbled upon a very new way of looking at HCF and LCM using Venn Diagrams. (Well, new for me – “the trained to think in a certain way, traditional schooled nerdy human”; probably not new to the rest of the world at all!) Till now Venn Diagrams were all about how many pupils in a certain classroom liked strawberry ice cream as well as vanilla ice cream, and how many spectators enjoyed cricket but not kabaddi! The brain then got stuck on the brilliance of Venn diagrams and how they applied to mundane life.
Met a dear friend yesterday after ages. We have some tiny but significant things in common, but quite a few things that aren't so. The “tiny significant things” are all that matter for a connect, we both realised, and there appeared a Venn diagram of two circles before me - one, me, and the other, her. The intersection contained the “significant commons” and the rest of the two circles held the intersection firmly in place. Then there came another circle, and another, and several others, each depicting a person, each intersection signifying something.
Our relationships with people, essentially based on whatever tiny we may have in common, hold steady only when the “complement of the intersection” is allowed a respectful presence. There are differences but they are a “complementary” presence that enhances compatibility. Subsets in human relations are unnatural – it’s when people aspire for subsets that relations go sore. "I disown the part of you that's not like me" doesn't help at all!
The intersection may well seem to be the most important factor in all our various relations but it is finally the respectable space that we accord to the “complement of the intersection” that dictates the strength of the relationship.
The universal set is bound to contain several other Venn diagrams, each as important as the other. Each circle is bound to have several intersections, sometimes multiple circles have intersections, at the same time it is not possible to find an intersection everywhere, and that's desirable, else we would end up with illegible squiggles instead of smart Venn diagrams!
Yeah… elementary math makes everything easy!