How to create a horizontal histogram the other way around?

Question

The gallery of matplotlib has a 2D scatter plot with two adjacent histograms for the marginal distribution of x and y values at the top and right, respectively. I want to modify that to show the histogram of y values on the left (instead of the right) but also oriented towards the scatter plot.

All I managed so far was to merely move it from the right to the left (see below), but not re-orientate it towards the scatter plot. How can I achieve that?

Here is my code:

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

# Fixing random state for reproducibility
np.random.seed(19680801)

# some random data
x = np.random.randn(1000)
y = np.random.randn(1000)


def scatter_hist(x, y, ax, ax_histx, ax_histy):
    # no labels
    ax_histx.tick_params(axis="x", labelbottom=False)
    ax_histy.tick_params(axis="y", labelleft=True,labelright=False)
    ax.tick_params(axis="y", left=False,labelleft=False,right=True,labelright=True)

    # the scatter plot:
    ax.scatter(x, y)

    # now determine nice limits by hand:
    binwidth = 0.25
    xymax = max(np.max(np.abs(x)), np.max(np.abs(y)))
    lim = (int(xymax/binwidth) + 1) * binwidth

    bins = np.arange(-lim, lim + binwidth, binwidth)
    ax_histx.hist(x, bins=bins)
    ax_histy.hist(y, bins=bins, orientation='horizontal')

# definitions for the axes
left, width = 0.3, 0.65
bottom, height = 0.1, 0.65
spacing = 0.005


rect_scatter = [left, bottom, width, height]
rect_histx = [left, bottom + height + spacing, width, 0.2]
rect_histy = [left-spacing-0.2, bottom, 0.2, height]

# start with a square Figure
fig = plt.figure(figsize=(8, 8))

ax = fig.add_axes(rect_scatter)
ax_histx = fig.add_axes(rect_histx, sharex=ax)
ax_histy = fig.add_axes(rect_histy, sharey=ax)

# use the previously defined function
scatter_hist(x, y, ax, ax_histx, ax_histy)

plt.show()

and here the result:

Answer 1

This can be achieved by setting the y-axis limit in the opposite direction.

ax_histy.hist(y, bins=bins, orientation='horizontal')
ax_histy.set_xlim(100,0) # add