The Georgia Negro: A Social Study - Bar graph shows earnings of African American farmers [LCCN2013650353]
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
Two colours do the moral sorting before a single number is read: black for the tenants who went backwards, crimson for those who came out ahead, and the longest object on the sheet is the black one. The brace is the real device - it re-aggregates the five small crimson categories into one bar that can be set directly against the debt bar, so the reader gets the breakdown and the headline comparison on the same sheet without a second chart. Holding back nearly half the board as empty space forces the eye onto the length difference and nothing else.
Steal this when
When a breakdown has many small categories that look trivial one by one but matter in total. Show the parts, brace them, and carry the sum out as a single bar placed alongside the category you want it compared against.