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The mode human body contains enough bones to make an entire skeleton. The average human body doesn't have enough.
The additional ~200 bones from fetuses in late stage pregnant woman would be more than the missing bones from amputees etc. OPs statement is accurate.
Wouldn’t they be too small though?
Skeleton size or proportionality not specified.
You can’t use one unfused half-bone in place of one full bone >:(
What if we use the little fetus bones to replace some of the smaller adult bones, and take those smaller adult bones to replace some bigger adult bones, and so on until we have a big ol' femur?
Actually, OP's statement is still wrong because there are more bones than 1 entire skeleton on average.
The statement "the ocean contains enough water to fill a bucket" doesn't mean the ocean only contains a single bucket of water. "The ocean contains enough water to fill one bucket" might imply that the ocean only contains one bucket of water but OP doesn't specify a number. This is an interesting conversation on ambiguous semantics in English.
That's a fair argument, and I suppose the average is somewhat close to one so it isn't that misleading, but if aliens asked how much water was on your planet's surface and you told them it was enough to fill a bucket, then you would be the asshole in that analogy.
The word average can technically refer to arithmetic mean, median, mode, or range. That's why you were probably taught them at the same time. That's also why tests like the ACT tend to have a * at the top that says something along the lines of "Unless otherwise stated, the word average indicates arithmetic mean."
I have never in my life seen it refer to anything but the mean
Because mean is the most common form of average. But, for example, when referring to salaries, the words median and average are often used interchangeably.
This isn't true at all
Edit: well they may be used interchangebly, but they're also used incorrectly in that case
Actually, the average human body contains more than one skeleton.
This depends entirely on how many people there are out there with missing limbs.
It would have to be a lot considering that a baby has a full set of bones while a missing limb is generally only a few of them.
Half the bones in a adult human are in the hands and feet. I don't know if there's enough missing limbs to offset fetus skeletons but I there's a whole lot of bones missing in a double amputee.
Babies have up to 270 bones at birth (instead of 206 in an adult), which makes up for at least one double amputee (hands have 27 bones and feet have 26 each).
Different perspective: Even if you miss a limb your body contains the full 100% of the skeleton you can find in a person missing that limb.
There still complete human beings even if their body has a unique challenge.
I appreciate what you're saying here - people come in all shapes and sizes, with different abilities, limb counts, etc. Every one is a human being deserving respect and dignity.
But OP didn't say "a complete human being" - it said "a complete human skeleton."
If an individual is missing a limb, by birth or by accident, they don't have a complete skeleton. It's a plain fact. Doesn't mean they are any less human.
I guess you could say they're missing body parts, but not humanity parts (necessarily)
Yeah kind of - I think "a complete body" is neither necessary or sufficient to make one a "human being."
For example, there are plenty of murderers, rapists, and pedos with "complete bodies," that have entirely lost their humanity in commission of their crimes against humanity. (However, I will always argue that this can never be a justification to exact cruelty upon them, as we necessarily lose our humanity in that process).
And there are so many people with "incomplete" bodies who are amazingly beautiful and strong human beings.
Are infinitesimally shaved average bones not bones? Idk who is the bone authority responsible for making that decision.
There are a lot of people missing bones, but I don’t think anyone has extra, so….
What about people with extra fingers and toes? Parasitic twins?
Pregnant women as well. Now their human body contains two skeletons, thus raising the average number of bones in a human body by a considerable amount. I would guess there's probably more pregnant women than there are people missing limbs.
Ok then technically we are all born with an extra set of teeth. That we lose. So a full skeleton contains all the baby teeth as well.
Traditionaly when talking about the skeleton, we refer to the adult skeleton seeing as an adolescent skeleton have more bones that then fuse. I agree that we need to take that into account, but I don't believe the statement would be referring to an adolescent skeleton.
Oh yeah, totally forgot about pregnancy. That should count too.
Plenty of people do. My sister for example had bones in her feet that never fused and had to have an extra removed. I guess that's pretty common
My wife has an extra rib above her collarbone.
Some people were born with extra fingers, and sometimes entire extra limbs.