From my experience the "Graphs" button should be called the "Panic" button. A month goes by with nothing spotted, your patrols don't find anything, you start wondering what's up, you get nervous. In desperation you check the "Graphs" screen. All looks fine... wait a minute, there's a sudden spike in South America? It's been sucking your score dry?! You rush to check and suddenly there's two Alien Bases and the countries are gonna pull their funding and and and!!!!
A globe overlay would be cool, but the Geoscape palette is mostly blues and greens, doesn't give you much to work with.