Solved – Convention of QQ Plot Axes/ Axis Labels

Question

I am building qq plots with a statistics package, however I notice my output is different than what I found in the econometric literature. For example, here is a qq plot from a publication I came across:

In this one the standardized residuals are on the Y axis. However, when I ran my package's built-in method for this kind of qq plot I got the axes switched (standardized residuals on the X axis). As seen above the labels on the literature's is simply "Standardized Residuals", whereas in the following Graph the label is "Quantiles of Standardized Residuals".

My software does not have any arguments for which axis it goes on.

My Question is: Is there a conventional rule for which axes the theoretical quantiles/ standardized residuals should go on? Or is it trivial? Also, is it conventional to include "Quantile" on the standardized residual axis space, or is it implied? Or are they two completely different things?

Answer 1

It's trivial in that if you label your axes it is clear what you've plotted. On the other hand, there's certainly a clear convention that I expect with plots (as described in the second-last sentence of this answer -- that when one quantity is random and the other is fixed, the random quantity goes on the y-axis). I find it somewhat surprising that so many programs ignore this convention when doing QQ plots but I expect they have some reason for doing it.

-Glen_b