Felt Tips provides a quick tip for using an Expression in After Effects that will essentially be driven by a text layer, where changing the text will change the bar chart interactively.
18 minute quick tip, showing how you can use a text layer in After Effects to control a simple bar chart
Felt Tips notes that the core of the expression is parsing the contents of the text layer as Javascript code, and then using a series of indexed After Effects Layers that will respond to the changes of the text layer.
