I think you're getting at the heart of why burn down charts are so pointless. The shape changes sprint to sprint, depending on what kind of stories you take on.

I think you're getting at the heart of why burn down charts are so pointless. The shape changes sprint to sprint, depending on what kind of stories you take on. If the sprint is entirely high pointed stories, your chart will be mostly horizontal. If the sprint is entirely 1 pointers, the graph will look like an exponential decay. Since the shape is always different, there's virtually zero useful information to take away from it. Some people in this thread claimed that burn down charts are useful for finding out a team's capacity. I disagree - you don't need a chart for this. If your team has a target velocity of 30 points and routinely fails to meet it, reduce the target velocity. Likewise, if the team routinely completes all of their work well before the end of the sprint, slightly increase the target velocity.