It would be neat if HN automatically provided something like this embedded at the top.

Like this? http://hnlike.com/hncharts/chart/?id=6582647

haha, I am at work and I get blocked...

"Your request was categorized by Blue Coat Web Filter as 'Hacking'."

I checked this at home - awesome, should be added to HN as a little widget with polls.

I only mention it because I learned the difference yesterday, but that is a bar graph, not a histogram.

If anyone's curious (like I was), a histogram has a continuous variable for it's x-axis, the bars on a histogram correspond to bins of the continuous variable. E.g. 1-10, 11-20, 21-30. In a bar graph, the x-axis is usually a discontinuous variable, typically types, with no specifically meaningful sort order, e.g. in this case, countries. Also, by convention, histograms have no spaces between bars to represent the continuity while bar graphs do to represent the discontinuity. Correct me if I'm wrong.

You're right. Seeing as I've been using the term 'histogram' in place of 'bar chart' all the time, that's some life-changing information right there.