Question

How do you determine what side of a graph should be x and what side is y when graphing a scatterplot in linear regression?? For instance, in the problem below:

(screen shot attached)

Answer 1

y will be the dependent variable, and x will be the independent variable.

So y is affected by x.

Regarding the problem you attached, consider if IQ affects job performance, or if job performance affects IQ.

I would say that IQ may affect job performance (as job performance does not affect IQ), so in this case x will be IQ and y will be job performance.

When data is presented in tables, it is usual for the x values to be on the left and the y values to be on the right (though, not in every case, of course!).