The chart was designed to illustrate the fact that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) had approved only a fraction of the applications for financial assistance it had received in the wake of the attack on the World Trade Center. The data were perfectly suited for the flow line charting form that was chosen, which allowed the viewer to see quickly how the applications were winnowed down. To highlight that point, I also kept everything a single shade of gray except the arrow representing the number of initial applications approved.