0
$\begingroup$

I'm a developer and some fellows here asked me if I could reverse x-axis on cartesian charts. Since this functionnality is not natively supported by the components I use, I wonder how relevant a chart with the maximum on the left of its abscissas axis and the minimum on the right would be correct, mathematically speaking.

My guess is that it is not correct if the chart displays numeric values, but I'm a bit short when explaining why... Could anyone help me please ?

TL;DR Can a chart revert its abscissas axis and still be mathematically correct ?

  • 0
    It's unusual in my experience, at least compared with how frequently an inverted y-axis is displayed. But that goes to conventions, not to mathematical correctness. – 2011-12-05

1 Answers 1

0

As commenters said, there is nothing incorrect with having values on the horizontal axis increasing right to left. A well-known example of such inversion of the horizontal axis is the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram of star luminosities versus their effective temperatures. The temperature increases right to left.

enter image description here

"Hertzsprung-Russel StarData" by ESO - http://www.eso.org/public/images/. Licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.