Although a Q–Q plot is based on quantiles, in a standard Q–Q plot it is not possible to determine which point in the Q–Q plot determines a given quantile. For example, it is not possible to determine the median of either of the two distributions being compared by inspecting the Q–Q plot. Some Q–Q plots indicate the deciles to make determinations such as this possible.
The intercept and slope of a linear regression between the quantiles gives a measure of the relative location and relative scale of the samples. If the median of the distribution plotted on the horizontal axis is 0, the intercept of a regression line is a measure of location, and the slope is a measure of scale. The distance between medians is another measure of relative location reflected in a Q–Q plot. The "probability plot correlation coefficient" is the correlation coefficient between the paired sample quantiles. The closer the correlation coefficient is to one, the closer the distributions are to being shifted, scaled versions of each other. For distributions with a single shape parameter, the probability plot correlation coefficient plot (PPCC plot) provides a method for estimating the shape parameter – one simply computes the correlation coefficient for different values of the shape parameter, and uses the one with the best fit, just as if one were comparing distributions of different types.