Experimental error is usually assumed to affect the rate  and not the substrate concentration , so  is the dependent variable. As a result, both ordinate  and abscissa  are subject to experimental error, and so the deviations that occur due to error are not parallel with the ordinate axis but towards or away from the origin. As long as the plot is used for illustrating an analysis rather than for estimating the parameters, that matters very little. Regardless of these considerations various authors have compared the suitability of the various plots for displaying and analysing data.