Every farmer queues his cows up in one line. So there are several lines of cows. Now one rich farmer owns a lot more cows than the other, poor farmers.

Someone wants to make a photo from above and has a problem: Either the long lines of the rich guys cows wont fit in the picture or he has to zoom out so far that the short lines arent really visible anymore.

So now if you leave out a bunch of cows from the long line and add a indicator, that there are left out cows. The numbers on the left make it that it still is correct and readable altho the longest line/bar is shorter.