[crazygringo]

It provides vastly more visual sense of the mountainous texture involved, as well as direct height comparison.

Our eyes are not great at detecting the difference between 80% and 82% grayscale, but they easily see the difference between adjacent shapes 80px and 82px tall.

Similarly, it's incredibly difficult for us to compare the difference between 80% and 82%, against 82% and 86%. Whereas with a line, it's trivial to see that the angle increased dramatically on the second one.

Grayscale and color maps are well-known for only being able to provide a "big-picture" overview because our eyes can only vaguely distinguish subtle differences in color/intensity. This type of plot addresses that partly.