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13 February 2013updated 26 Sep 2015 3:16pm

The United Nations doesn’t understand Venn diagrams

The UN has been making "venn diagrams". Oh dear.

By Alex Hern

Forget Mitt Romney, the United Nations needs to go back to school to learn about Venn Diagrams. Business Insider — with the headline “This Is The Most Useless, Baffling Chart In Obama’s State Of The Union” — highlights this chart, cited by the White House to support the President’s claims on renewable energy:

I… what? As Dan Davies points out, the only way that chart makes any sense as a Venn diagram is if it’s showing that around $10bn of renewable investment in China and the US is the same money. Which seems unlikely.

Anyway, it seems like a waste of time to remake our lovely primer on Venn diagrams, but for the chart-makers at the UN, here’s an example of a real Venn diagram:

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