Hi and sorry for my poor english, I'm italian.
It is possible to wire LM3914 to drive leds with arduino, I've used them for my little project (sorry for bad image quality, I'll post some video when I'll finish my work):
http://img267.imageshack.us/img267/249/kittscale.png
LM3914 does not like pwm as input so I have put a low pass filter on the arduino pwm output and it works great (a 100K resistor and a 1uF capacitor between arduino pwm pin and LM3914. I'm a beginner in elecroinc and scripting so these values may be wrong... forgive me if I'm in fault 
However shift registers are better to drive leds even if they require 3 pin to work against one of LM3914, they are less expensive
Greetings from Italy,
Pelletta