Tableaux d'arithmetique lineaire (French edition of the Commercial and Political Atlas) - Tableau del'interêt annuel des dettes de l'Angleterre, en les supposant faites par annuités de 15 années à raison de 10 p. %. Playfair inv [14319.064]
The pattern
This still is filed under Data as proof.
Define
A chart, map, or count that is the argument, not an illustration next to the argument.
Mechanism
Sighted evidence. The reader is asked to believe their eyes: a bar, a share, a spread on a map.
Verdict
The claim is comparative or quantitative and the figure can be read without a caption doing the sell.
Why it works
This is a counterfactual drawn on real axes: a history that never happened, engraved with the same authority as one that did, and placed to be compared against the plate of actual perpetual loans. The repeated mesa shape does the arguing on its own, because each debt visibly ends and the empty gaps between blocks are the whole point. The boxed totals in the top-left corner hand a skimmer the conclusion in three numbers before any curve is read. The vertical rule marking the present year splits recorded fact from projection, which lets Playfair forecast fifty years forward without passing the forecast off as data.
Steal this when
Use it when you want to show what a different financing, pricing or policy decision would have produced. Draw the counterfactual on the same axes, at the same scale, as the real series, so the comparison is structural rather than rhetorical.