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It’s always good to remind yourself never to trust anyone throwing google counts at you like they are representative of anything.

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Sometimes, you just have to google every combination of “Part X of Y” where X and Y are numbers from one to five, and put the results in a table.  The rows contain the X’s and columns the Y’s, so row “two” column “four” (8,790,000 hits) is “Part two of four”.

I think this shows a little bit how wacky google counts are, but also how few people make it to the fourth part of a five part series.  The red cells indicate a contradiction where the indexed part exceeds the number of parts, indicating either poor planning or a misunderstanding about what the words mean.

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Because one post on the the relative frequencies of “I’d give my X Y” simply is not enough, here is a (not the slightest bit) handy chart on the google search results when you plug boths sides of several body parts into the expression.  Not only have I helpfully pointed to the body parts (in case you forget where hands and eyes are), but I have adjusted the type size based on the magnitude of results, and underlined the side of the body part that gets more hits, pairwise.  A few notes:

• Aside from a few outliers, when you compare paired body parts, people seem almost equally willing to forego their left or right, but the small preference towards losing the lefty is too consisent to write off as mere noise in the data.  I think we need to abandon my first hypothesis (based on eyes and arms) about people using this expression to connote giving up the paired body part that means more to them.
• A full quarter of the hits for “I’d give my right arm” are actually for “I’d give my right arm to be ambidextrous,” which I’ll admit I found mildly clever, but I’m more frustrated that it biases the results.
• In general, google counts are pretty suspect, so these totals might not truly express internet usage, let alone non-written speech.  If anyone wants to record the results from another search engine, that would obviously be very helpful.
• It’s probably best to assume the bathroom sign man is facing away from you.  That way, the results on the right side of the chart, which are for “I’d give my right Y,” will correspond to bathroom sign man’s right side.
• This is, of course, a horrible chart.  A table would be much easier to read.  I’m also sorry it’s not quite symmetrical.  There’s really not much excuse for it not being symmetrical.
• What’s up with Butt Cheeks?
• Gil “GuerillaG/TooKranky” Gershman would give the right hemisphere of his brain for the Watersong/Dragonfly 7” by Windy and Carl.

I’d prefer to keep all my body parts where they are.

Below are the google results (in thousands) when you search for “I’d give my X Y” where X is either “right” or “left” and Y is a body part that comes in twos.  Sorry I didn’t try to make it pretty, but that data is what’s important.

Part | Left | Right

Eye | 117 | 95.5

Arm | 698 | 3,290

Nut | 934 | 102

Judging by the googlable masses’ desire to forgo their right hand, and knowing what we do about the large proportion of righties in the population, I think it’s safe to assume that most people using this expression mean something like “I would give either of my hands for this thing I want so badly, even my right hand, which, since I’m right handed, is giving up a lot” and not “This thing I want, I would give up my right arm for it, but I don’t want it enough to give up my left arm, which contains my favorite hand”.  Sure, some people might be thinking the latter, but I think those people who want to lose an arm would just as happily to lose the left.

This theory holds pretty well for eyes.  I have two eyes and no real preference for one above the other.  I think most people are similar.  Sure some people may have one eye they prefer, but I bet that preferred eye would be pretty close to 50-50 in the population (of people willing to give up body parts on the internet), which is what we see in the google counts.

But why the hell do people care so much more about their left testicle?  Or I can understand why people care about their left testicle, but why care more than the right?

Does anyone have a theory?  I guess it’s just a fixed expression, but it’s not that fixed, since it probably came from “right arm.”  Are left nuts funnier than right ones? graver? And if so, why is there a flip from arm to nut?

Furthermore, 100 bonus points to anyone who can name something that they would be willing to give one of their paired body parts for, but not the other.  Please name the body part and the side you are unwilling to lose, as well.  My sense is the value of the right and left hand have the greatest disparity, but if you can find that thing that you value more than your left eyebrow but not as much as your right, more power to you.