Where to place on a graph?

Question

Daily Newspaper Circulation, and Households with television.

I'm having a hard time knowing which one would go on either the x or y axis

Answer 1

Assuming the point of the graph is to show how newspaper circulation was affected by the adoption of the tv as a common household item (ie, as more households purchased televisions, daily newspaper circulation dropped since people were watching the news instead of reading it), Households with television will go on the x axis, and Daily Newspaper Circulation will go on the y axis.

Answer 2

I'm assuming you are making a scatter plot / coordinate graph and plotting the number of households that have a tv in a given area compared to how many take the newspaper.  If that is the case, I don't think it matters which axis because neither emerges as the independent or dependent variable.  I guess it is possible that some would argue that the number of people who take the paper depends on the number of people who have/do not have a tv.

Answer 3

If you are trying to see the effect that houses with TVs has on newspaper circulation, put houses on the x axis.  If the other way around put Daily circulation on the x axis.  If you just want to compare them then it doesn't matter which goes on which axis.