Pros & Cons of Using Google Totals

MrPedantic wrote:

Or to take another example: in the case of "if it were" (14.9m) vs "if it was" (22m), we would not know without checking how many hits for the latter were non-counterfactual (e.g. "Not sure if it was reading that or my hardcore revision for my swiftly approaching politics exam, but yeah, I have a headache"). There isn't an equivalent ambiguity in "if it were", however.

Yeah, good point, I hadn't thought of that. That adds confusion, so that's one more reason not to use Google the wrong way.

You know what? You guys can do what you want, I'm not going to believe any results unless they are "real" (= it is possible to check them).

Anyway, even if you wanted to see it from a probabilistic point of view, it still wouldn't make sense. I mean, you are considering the number of result, or the error, as a random variable, but we are not sure whether it actually behaves like a random variable. And even if you could say it's random... how could you write equalities and inequalities using that random variable?

outcome of dice 1 = outcome of dice 2
outcome of dice 1 < outcome of dice 2
outcome of dice 1 > outcome of dice 2

????