This is the code for Chapter 2, Figure 17 from D3.js in Action that creates rectangles with height based on the data bound to the selection. Rectangles are scaled to fit the small drawing area by utilizing d3.scale.linear().
<html>
<head>
<title>D3 in Action Chapter 2 - Example 7</title>
<meta charset="utf-8" />
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/d3/3.5.5/d3.min.js"></script>
</head>
<style>
svg {
height: 500px;
width: 500px;
border: 1px solid gray;
}
</style>
<body>
<div>
<svg>
</svg>
</div>
</body>
<footer>
<script>
var yScale = d3.scale.linear().domain([0,24500]).range([0,100]);
d3.select("svg")
.selectAll("rect")
.data([14, 68, 24500, 430, 19, 1000, 5555])
.enter()
.append("rect")
.attr("width", 10)
.attr("height", function(d) {return yScale(d)})
.style("fill", "blue")
.style("stroke", "red")
.style("stroke-width", "1px")
.style("opacity", .25)
.attr("x", function(d,i) {return i * 10})
.attr("y", function(d) {return 100 - yScale(d)});
</script>
</footer>
</html>