The first time he speaks with her, she comes to see him with her advisor.
He is in the process of perusing a particularly tricky piece of code that appears to require an unduly amount of debugging when he hears their footstep through the door, left approximately one inch ajar due to Christopher's insistent demands that students always feel welcome in faculty's offices.
The sound of heels clicking on the stone floor halts several feet before reaching the entrance. He can hear Doctor Pike—Please, I told you to call me Vina, Spock—speak in a voice that attempts to be a whisper but is not quite low enough, perhaps because of an inadequate understanding of the building's acoustics.
"Now, he can be very…" She trails off, into a pause of three seconds. Spock can picture quite clearly her right hand waving in circles while she seeks the appropriate word, as he has witnessed before in multiple instances. "Well. Glacial. But don't take it personally. He's actually a great guy. Like a son, to Chris."
He barely has the time to wonder if that makes Vina like a mother to him when the footsteps resume, followed by a loud knock.
He minimizes his script editor window and swivels his chair to face the door. "Come in." He stands.
Vina enters first, a cloud of perfume and toothy smiles, her so nice to see you a jumble of stretched out vowels and wavy pitch. She steps in immediately behind, and remains silent, observing, until Vina takes her by the elbow and pulls her forward.
"As I mentioned in the email, this is Nyota Uhura, my graduate student." She turns to face her. "Nyota, this is Doctor Spock Grayson. I'm sure you've heard all about him, what with him being the superstar of UCSF Computer Science and all that. You look fantastic, Spock," she finishes with a chuckle.
She steps forward and extends her hand. The latus rectum of the parabola that is her smile is significantly longer than Vina's. Spock wonders if it is due to some structural constraints posed by her facial features, or if she is just less happy than her advisor to be here.
"Nice to finally meet you, Doctor Grayson. Thank you for making the time to see us."
The handshake is firm, and it lasts very little. Less than a seconds, he estimates. Her skin is agreeably cool, and her nails are short, painted in a shade somewhere between red and black, which surely has a name that Spock has never had reason to learn. "Likewise. Please, sit down."
Spock waits until he is confident that his lower body is covered from view by his desk, and then flexes the hand she just touched, once.
...
Her dissertation project is not simple, but his role in it will be.
He was sent a grant proposal, authored by Miss Uhura, that was competently written, adequately informative, and provided all the necessary details to obtain a sufficient understanding of the study. He has, of course, read it in preparation for this meeting, and thus there is no real reason to go over the basic purpose and structure of the project once more. However, Spock has learned long ago that people, and people in academic settings in particular, appear to both underestimate others' ability to retain knowledge, and to vastly enjoy the sound of their own voices. Therefore, he does not interrupt Vina's protracted explanation, even at its most redundant moments.
He does wonder if the fact that Miss Uhura has yet to utter a word regarding her dissertation project is indicative of her intelligence, her reserve, or simply of Vina's tendency to talk at length.
"Fitting a computational model once the data is collected should be a relatively easy matter," he says at the end of Vina's speech, while both women look at him expectantly. "The data files can be transferred to the Computer Science servers and I will run the analysis using HPCC. I will need to consult with you to decide the parameters and the most appropriate algorithms, but I should be able to complete the rest on my own and to provide you with the final results." He alternates looking at each woman, unsure of who exactly is in charge of the project.
"If it's possible, I would like to be involved, Doctor Grayson." She has a remarkably melodic voice. Pleasant to listen to. Lovely, his mother might have called it. Even if she is saying something he has heard before, multiple times, each time with a little more annoyance than the previous. "I don't know much about computational techniques but I would love to learn. It's the only way for me to stay on top of the project, really."
Her eyes are larger than average. That, or it is an effect created by the methods she uses to apply makeup. It briefly reminds him of an old acquaintance of his, and of staring at her from his bed as she chattered away happily while drawing lines on her eyelid with something that looked uncannily like a black pencil.
He nods once. "Very well," he answers her.
...
The first time he sees her, it is one year, ten months, and seven days before their first meeting.
All second-year Ph.D. students in Linguistics are required to give a short seminar on their first-year research projects. They are evaluated and ranked according to their performance by a panel of extra-departmental faculty, and the best presenter is awarded, if Spock understands correctly, a very modest cash prize, and the dubious glory of having one's face printed on letter-size posters and plastered inside the elevators of the Linguistics building, and possibly on the department website.
Spock and Jim are ostensibly having a grant meeting in one of the conference rooms in Computer Science when Christopher finds them. You can't run, you can't hide from your department chair, Jim is fond of telling Spock.
"… and it turns out that that guy is completely wasted, so he actually lifts the freaking iron bar stool he's sitting on and throws it in my dire—"
"Yes, yes. Charming, Kirk." Christopher is standing in the doorway, watching Jim with three parts disdain and one part amused fondness. "I need you and Spock to go over to Linguistics and play faculty judges for their student seminars or whatever the hell it is they do, yes, again. Or Vina's threatened to poison my cereal tomorrow morning."
Jim does not miss a beat. "Actually, I'm teach—"
"Nice try, but I checked your schedule. And please, tone it down with the negative feedback. I hear that last year one student got two 'boring' and one 'you should consult a competent statistical advisor' and ended up dropping out two weeks later."
Jim waits for Christopher to be out of earshot and grins at Spock. "Don't beat yourself up. He did need better stats."
Spock sighs. "Agreed."
For the first seven talks, he occupies himself by mentally revising a complex algorithm he has been making little progress on. He reaches the conclusion that adjusting the dynamic equation is not likely to yield more easily interpretable results, although a tweaking of the beta weights might do the trick, and if not, the matrices should—
He is yanked out of his reflections merely seconds after she has taken the stage, when the audience around him erupts in laughter. She is laughing, too. Quite contagiously. Spock wonders if, had he heard it, he would have found her joke funny. It is unlikely.
She gesticulates while she speaks, graceful, sweeping arches, explaining intriguing concepts that he has never heard of before, complicated terms such as neo-whorfianism and polysemy. Her voice shakes, albeit minimally, and he thinks that she might be nervous, but her words remain clear and her sentences articulated. Her argument is compelling and well constructed, and when the moderator interrupts her to signal that she only has one minute left, Spock experiences a flicker on annoyance.
Let her speak.
If he were the type to notice these things, he would think her beautiful. He is not, of course.
When she steps down from the podium, after her conclusions, which are impressive, and after an applause, which is less enthusiastic than Spock deemed her talk deserving of, everyone in the seminar room stands. Linguistics has, apparently, cohorts of eight.
Jim makes a show of stretching his arms and craning his neck, a thinly disguised attempt to look around the room. "Check this out, Spock. And did you see on stage? They're all chicks in this department." Little by little, Jim has learned that similar comments should be made very, very quietly. It appears that no amount of correction from Spock or McCoy will convince him that they should not be made at all. "Hey, we're still on for basketball tonight, right?"
They turn in their ballots directly to Vina, who accepts them with a pleased smile and replies motherly to Jim's unabashed flirting. Spock has selected her as the top presenter, and written as number two and three two names that, were quizzed in a police lineup, he could probably not associate with a face.
The following day he checks the Linguistics website and is disappointed to learn that she is not the winner.
...
"This is ridiculous. They are fucking morons, and they will regret this." Jim is incensed.
As is Spock, although less melodramatically so.
"To be fair, Jim, the rejection is not entirely unexpected. It is Nature, after all." He cocks his head, and he acknowledges, "The reasons for the rejection, of course, are another matter…"
"'The paper would benefit from the use of Bayesian methods, which might be too complicated for the authors.'" Jim is reading out loud from the editor's report, cheeks flushed. His fury, like most of his emotions, and there is far-reaching range of them, is a sight to behold. "'Of little interest to anyone but the authors'? Fuck this shit. Anonymous reviewer, my ass. This is Nero. It's gotta be Nero. You know what I'm gonna do."
"I most certainly do no—"
"I'm gonna go downstairs, get my car, drive down to Pasadena, find his office and punch him in the face." He pauses for a breath. "And you're coming with me, Spock."
The corner of Spock's mouth twitches. Threatens to rise, until Spock successfully stifles it. "We have no evidence supporting that this particular reviewer is Nero."
Though, of course, it is Nero.
"Yeah, you're right. What am I thinking?" Jim nods in all seriousness. "You should probably just stay here, so you can be my fake alibi later. You know what? Fuck it. We're going higher."
Spock sighs. He has estimated that meeting Jim four point seven years ago has increased his average daily sighing rate of six-hundred percent. His father would be appalled, were he to know. "Jim, it is Nature. There is no 'higher' impact factor journal."
A change in the color pattern in his peripheral field of view, or perhaps a soft noise coming from the office doorway, has him look up from Jim's scowl.
"Doctor Grayson. Hi."
It is her.
She is wearing sweater of a particularly intense red color. Burgundy, his brain efficiently digs out from some poorly lit corner and provides. Her hair is long, and dark, and straight, and it is, as is the fate of all things with mass, subject to gravity. Spock forces himself not to follow its course down her chest with his gaze.
He should just focus on her eyes. Which are busy taking in Jim's feet, currently propped on Spock's desk. "Is this your office hours?"
It is, although by this point in the semester he usually has intimidated his undergraduate students to the degree that no one shows up for it. Hence Jim's sprawl on his guest chair.
"Correct. You may come in. Doctor Kirk was just about to leave for Pasadena."
Jim grudgingly lowers his legs to the ground. "I sure am." He turns to face Miss Uhura with a grin, the exceptionally wide, exceptionally friendly one that he usually reserves for attractive women. Spock is not annoyed, at least not more than he habitually is in Jim's presence. "And who do we have here? It's unlike you to have guests, Spock."
She hesitates, momentarily taken aback by Jim's interest. Her eyes dart to Spock before replying, as if seeking reassurance that yes, a tenure-track professor is presently flirting with her in a tenured professor's office. Spock attempts to keep his expression devoid of eye rolls. "I'm Nyota Uhura, Doctor Kirk. I'm a fourth year in Linguistics, working with Doctor Pike. It's nice to meet you."
Spock notices that she does not offer her hand.
Jim nods, suddenly uninterested. Students are off limits, of course, at least as long as they introduce themselves as students, and even more so if they do so on campus. "I see. Another student of Vina's…" His words are marked by a pointed look at Spock, a mix of understanding and pity. Miss Uhura stiffens visibly, and Spock experiences the strong temptation to throw a pencil sharpener at him. "Well, I'll leave you two to it while I go on my rampage. Spock, I'm resubmitting that paper without revising. Tonight. I'm thinking PNAS."
Spock's raises an eyebrow. "It might be best to ask for Doctor McCoy's opinion first. He has had several disagreements with one of editors, if I recall correctly."
"Not worth it. Bones could feud with my freaking cat." The last three words echo in the hallway outside the office, bouncing off the empty hallway.
Spock is left alone with her.
It is one year, nine months, and twenty-nine days since the first time he laid eyes on her.
She looks with diffidence at the chair Jim has been using, and then wisely opts for sitting on the other one. It takes some shuffling around, as in addition to her backpack and a tablet she is carrying a canvas bag, which reads 'Are you feeling tense, irregular, moody? You must be a verb.' It is, quite offensively, typed in Comic Sans.
"Thanks for making time, Doctor Grayson. And for agreeing to help me with my dissertation." Her voice is lovely.
"You may call me Spock," he tells her. Being on a first-name basis fosters a positive, collaborative relationship with the student body. At least, according to another of Christopher's intradepartmental memos.
"Ok. Spock." She smiles while she repeats his name, as if tasting it on her lips.
He is, of course, unaffected. "Would you like to discuss your project?"
"Oh, no. I mean, yes, eventually, after the data mining stage is complete. But for now, I was wondering if you could recommend some introductory material to computational modeling. Something that you would have your first-year students read, perhaps." She hesitates for a second. She sounds quite earnest when she picks up again. "I really do mean to be as active as possible, even in the computing part of the project."
Although he has relatively little professional interest in linguistic, this is not the first time Spock has been asked to help a student. In fact, this is not the first, or the even the fifth time he has been asked to help one of Vina's student, courtesy of Christopher's manipulations. The fact that she often outsources her most complicated analyses to her husband's faculty is a running joke within the department.
In Spock's experience, Vina advises two types of students. The ones who want nothing to do with anything that involves mathematics. And the ones who want nothing to do with anything that involves mathematics, but require weeks to admit it to themselves. Over time, the latter kind winds up looking a Spock as if his favorite pastime were terrorizing young, defenseless, linguistically-oriented minds by brandishing lines of code. This kind also tends to demand quite a bit of his time, often with little results to show for it.
Suppressing a sigh, Spock stands and walks to his library. He collects three books and hands them to her, making sure not to brush her hands by accident.
"These are the textbooks I use for my graduate Computational Modeling class. It is a requirement for first-year students in the Computer Science program. I am not teaching the class this semester, so you may keep them as long as you like."
She smiles. Compared to last week, he notices, the latus rectum is much shorter.
He is, yet again, unaffected.
"Thank you so much," she tells him standing up. She is, he notices now that there is no furniture between them, much shorter than he is. He supposes he thought she was taller, perhaps due to her slenderness. Perhaps she wore heels, when he previously saw her. Perhaps she simply disorients his perceptual systems, for no rhyme or reason. "I'll return them as soon as I've finished them."
"There is no haste." He walks back to his seat. "Have a good night, Miss Uhura."
"Nyota. Please, call me Nyota. Since I'm calling you Spock."
He nods once, and does not repeat her name.
She waves her hand, and is out of his office, exactly four minutes and fifty seconds after arriving.
He does not expect to see her again for a while.
...
Like every Thursday night, his Skype rings precisely at 10:30 PM.
Spock has been waiting at his desk for the past five minutes, staring at the sparse icons on his desktop, arms folded on his chest. Well before the camera turns on and the video settles, he knows that his pose will perfectly mimic his father's. My boys. And all these barriers they love to erect, he can almost hear his mother say, her laughter full of sorrow and regret.
She is, without a doubt, the one single reason why these weekly conversations continue to occur, heavier and graver than the many others Spock has to simply forget about his father's existence. He is well aware that Sarek feels the same.
"Father," he begins in Swedish.
"Spock. How are you?" It is 5:30 AM in Stockholm. Although his father cannot have been awake for more than thirty minutes, his voice lacks any trace of hoarseness.
"Adequate. And you?"
"Acceptable. Do you have any news you wish to rely?"
When these ritual calls began, shortly after his mother's death, Spock would simply say that no, he had none, and the following conversation would last less than a handful of minutes. Spock would hang up, and spend long nights remembering his mother's cool hands on his forehead when he was ill, or the way she had manage to grow Kungsljus against all odds in the Embassy gardens, or her infinite patience when Spock was very young and persisted in expressing himself exclusively through mathematical terms. He would experience a feeling of discontent, a restlessness, which required several weeks to be identified as guilt.
Consequently, he began to communicate to Sarek a larger amount of details about his life. That, Spock soon discovered, was another mistake, as Sarek's opinion of his son's choices and behaviors had not altered in any meaningful way since Spock's childhood. Nor had Sarek's blunt way of sharing his displeasure.
Spock's current strategy, a product of many trials and many errors, is to disclose small pieces of comparatively inconsequential, harmless information, which provide his father with a suitable topic of conversation, but not with ammunition.
"I was recently awarded a grant supporting a collaboration with the department of Internal Medicine to produce a model of post-stroke mechanisms contributing to neural tissue damage." Innocuous. Meaningless. Generic.
"I congratulate you."
Spock nods in acknowledgement and talks for a few more minutes about the project, trying to avoid spacing out. His father would indubitably realize it.
When Spock's monologue is complete, it is Sarek's turn to speak of his work. His father used to be the Swedish ambassador to Tunisia, first, and later to the United States. He now occupies an important position in the Swedish government.
"You might have read this on the Expressen: Sjöberg's son was elected secretary of the Sverigedemokraterna. It is a great accomplishment, for one so young. His family is proud." His father is, as usual, expressionless.
Spock obtained his Ph.D. from MIT at the age of twenty-one, and was a tenured professor by the time he turned twenty-six. However, his lack of interest in a political career and, even worse, what his father once referred to as his 'radical leftist positions', reduce him to little more than wasteful disappointment.
"I do not often have the opportunity to read the Expressen," Spock replies carefully.
They hang up two minutes and thirty seconds later, with the promise to talk again the following week.
It is 10:49 PM.
Spock changes into his running clothing and exits his apartment.
...
He does not expect to see her for a while.
Certainly not three days and twenty-two hours following her last visit.
This time his door is closed, as is every other faculty's door in the department, because Christopher was invited to a conference in France as the keynote speaker, and will not be back to San Francisco for at least one week.
Spock is in the process of quickly typing a response email to a student whom he cannot recall ever seeing attending class, and who just asked him for extra credits by addressing him as 'dude.'
The knock on the door is simultaneously cautious and firm.
"Enter," he says, and does not lift his eyes from the screen, even when the door opens and the visitor comes in.
"Hi, Spock." It is her voice.
He has to expend a certain degree of effort to avoid leaving the email half written and turning to face her immediately. Still. He forces himself to complete the task at hand and then, only then, to spin his chair by thirty degrees and look at her.
The hair is curlier, today. The fashion in which the strands twine around her earrings, as well as the nimble way her fingers twirl the black strands, are most distracting. With surprise, Spock realizes that he has made her wait for seventeen seconds, and that she is fidgeting. "How may I help you?"
She lifts the book she is hugging to her chest to show him the title. It reads 'Models of Computation: An Introduction to Compatibility Theory', and it is familiar to him, as it is one of the three texts he lent her at the beginning of the week.
Odd, to think that something that usually resides in his library is now in her arms. But insignificant. Spock is unaffected by such a realization.
"This text is a bit... trickier than I expected. I know it's supposed to be introductory, but it relies on several informatics concepts that I've never encountered." To say that Spock is not a good reader of people's emotions would be a laughable understatement, and yet… she does not appear to be sad, or discouraged, or angry with him for assigning her a task beyond her current skillset. "I think I might need even more elementary textbooks." Her smile is self-deprecating. Unlike her other ones, it is slightly non-symmetrical. Not a parabola, then. And yet, it could undoubtedly be graphed, with the correct quadratic polynomial equation. "I saw online that you also teach Intro to Computational Models for undergrads on odd years."
She does not continue, and just looks at him expectantly. Spock wonders if there is a question he did not detect in her words. If there are variables that he forgot to abstract and include in his implicit simulation of this conversation, leaving him helpless to predict its aim. There is something about her that is uniquely distracting, and than makes him struggle in their interactions a little more than he has in recent memory.
After a few seconds, she asks, "So… May I borrow the books you recommended for that class? The library copies are currently checked out."
Ah. Of course.
He heads to the shelf, and starts searching for the books. Suzanne Perkins taught that class the previous semester, and as a consequence his copies have been moved to the highest shelf, the one even he has to go on his toes to reach.
As he retrieves the first one, he realizes that she has moved to stand next to him, seemingly to peruse his other titles. In order to grab the second book, he has to reach in her direction, about three feet above her head. She does not appear to notice.
It is a combination of factors outside of both their wills, that when he is back on his heels she is closer to him than she has ever been.
He is, yet again, unaffected.
She accepts the books with a smile, thanks him profusely, and wishes him a lovely weekend. She also remembers to close the door after herself when she walks out.
Spock stares at it for eleven seconds before returning to work.
...
He spends Friday evening revising a grant proposal with McCoy, Saturday evening in bed with Christine, and Sunday playing basketball with Jim. He works on a particularly complex piece of code in the remaining time.
Although not lovely, it is a tolerable weekend.
...
Seventy-one hours and thirty-three minutes after the previous time, she comes by again.
Wordlessly, he hands her the textbooks he uses for his undergraduate Introduction to Computer Science class, and she accepts them with a symmetric smile. The latus rectum's length is unchanged.
...
He does not see her again for several weeks.
He does not expect to, as to date her determination has far surpassed her predecessors, but as much as she is an outlier, a ceiling effect is to be anticipated. He would not be surprised if her efforts culminated like most of her colleagues', with little learned and a total reliance on Spock to complete the computational part of her project.
He is, however, surprised to find himself once or twice wishing that they did not.
When she comes, he has not thought of her for days, for various reasons: the usual work-related commitments; a particularly stressful conversation with his father regarding his unwillingness to meet with one of his acquaintances' young, single daughter who happens to live on the West Coast; an exhausting Sunday spent with Jim, babysitting McCoy's daughter; and the fact that it is the week past midterms and Gary, his teaching assistant for Programming Abstractions, appears to be confined at home with mononucleosis.
Which explains the horrifically long line he discovers right out of his office the day after the grades are released to the students. He counts eight, ten, twelve people sitting on the floor of the hallway, faces buried in their phones, and then abruptly stops, deciding that in this specific instance ignorance might be preferable. While he unlocks the door he allows himself a few seconds to fantasize about resigning, effective immediately, and accepting one of the job offers companies in the Silicon Valley extend him periodically.
Two hours later, he calls in the last person in line, fully ready to dial Gary's phone number and have him deal with them should they burst out crying because of an A minus, beg Spock to calculate what their score on the final exam should be to obtain a C as the overall grade, or ask where the syllabus can be obtained. Spock is well aware that he is not a particularly patient teacher, and that if it were left to his undergraduate course evaluations, the retention package that the department offers him every time another institution tries to recruit him would be significantly less rich. Or nonexistent.
He is massaging his temples when she appears at the door, with a smile, a full-to-bursting backpack, and a small, brown paper bag.
The smile is arresting, and must be directed at him, as he is the only other person in the room. His heart, unaffected, keeps beating at the same rate at it was before she entered. Of course.
"Wow. I stopped by thirty minutes ago and there were still about ten people milling around." With some difficulty, she takes her backpack off her shoulder and sits on the chair in front of him. "It looked intense."
Spock feels his shoulders relax. "I trust you are not here to offer to take care of my grocery shopping in exchange for a better grade on your midterm."
She laughs. His heart definitely does not skip two, three beats. "What a coincidence. Last week someone offered to clean my apartment for free. I wonder if it's the same person?" She cocks her head, as if actually considering the possibility.
"I suppose I should be grateful that they did not offer to write a make-up paper."
"Right." She wrinkles he nose, and Spock finds himself wondering whether it is something everyone can do, or a special skill of hers. It is mesmerizing. "What better way to ingratiate yourself with your professors than giving them more to grade?" She small, delicate shudder. "I'm surprised you don't have a TA, though. I thought Computer Science offered several positions, since there are so many undergrads."
"I do. He chose an unfortunate time to be ill."
She nods sympathetically, and her eyes must catch the small bag on her lap, reminding her of its existence. She grabs it and offers it to Spock, her arm extending over his desk.
"Here, I got you this. I figure you'd need some sustenance after the office hours from hell."
There is a slight delay between the moment she offers the bag and the moment he is able to convince his own hand to lift and accept it. He opens it slowly, almost tentatively. It is a cookie. Spock stares at it dumbfounded for longer than is probably necessary.
"Chocolate pecan," she explains. "You're not allergic or anything, right?" He shakes his head, and his mouth waters. He cannot remember the last time he held a cookie in his hands, let alone ate one. He is not in the habit to consume sweets. Treats were not something that was tolerated in Sarek's household, although when he was a kid his mother would sometimes sneak him chocolate, or gummy bears.
"Thank you. It is much appreciated."
She waves her hand. "No problem." He is grateful that she does not seem to expect him to eat the cookie immediately, as he is not sure he could do so and pay attention to his surroundings. "I'm actually here to return your books. All seven of them." She gestures to her backpack, and then bends, starts extracting the volumes. "And I had a couple of question about the materials, if you think you can stand to talk about computers and stuff for a few more minutes."
He refrains from pointing out that the Programming Abstractions class he is teaching is not precisely about 'computers and stuff'. "I would be happy to."
Spock is never happy. And he never, ever lies.
Nonetheless, she rewards him with a smile that creases her eyes.
"Well, the thing is," she efficiently opens one of the books on the end chapter, right where a green post-it is sticking out, and points to a figure, "Hebbian learning. To describe it, I need a set of values for the weights and one for nodes, right?"
He nods once. "Correct."
"What is not clear to me is, how does the weight update rule work mathematically?"
Spock takes a blank piece of paper from a desk tray, then looks around for his pencil, only to find it mysteriously wedged underneath his keyboard. Ah, yes. He used it to explain a student that no matter what the final curve will be, his forty percent on the test is unlikely to become an A.
He starts drawing examples of nodes and weights, making sure to angle the paper so that she can see it clearly. She leans forward. He keeps his back straight. "What you should keep in mind, is that nodes that tends to activate simultaneously will develop stronger connections." He writes numbers underneath each symbol, and uses the pencil to guide her through his words. "In this case, the activation formula would require adding the activation of one node to all the other nodes to which it is connected. The sum will be adjusted by multiplying for the values of each weight, which in turn is influenced by the number of previous co-occurrences." She studies the paper for a few moments, nodding in understanding, then flashing him a quick smile.
"This is much clearer now. I guess something that confused me is that the emphasis in this text is always on prediction, and on how that's the goal of modeling one's data according to a specific set assumptions. But that just doesn't reflect several of the examples in this other text," she taps the hard cover of the book in her lap, "since many scientist already know the ending point, and just want help understanding the phenomena they are interested in. Does that make sense?"
Spock nods.
"So, this is probably a stupid question, but if this is the case, isn't it incorrect to assume that a model's main aim is prediction?"
"It is not."
"Oh, it isn't it? But, then why—"
"I meant, it is not a stupid question. In fact, it is a quite advanced one, which reflects a current debate in the field. It reveals a deep comprehension of the material you read. "
"Oh." She might be flushing. He does not posses enough elements to be certain.
"The answer is that models can be built for several reasons, that include the exploration of dynamical analogies, investigation of core dynamics or uncertainties, and data collection. In your case, you will want to build an explanatory model based on real life observations. Explanation and prediction are often conflated by scientists, but are in fact quite different concepts. We know, for instance, that earthquakes are caused by the movement of tectonic plaques, but we are largely unable to predicts when they will occur. The textbook you read adopts an overly simplistic view of the matter." Although his students rarely realize it.
She nods, and writes a few words on the notebook. "Thanks, this is helpful. You're a good teacher," she tells him without lifting her eyes.
If Spock had not been raised by Sarek, he would burst into laughter. As it is, he quirks an eyebrow. "I am not."
She looks up at him, surprised. "You are, too. Your explanations are very clear. And the books you chose were perfect."
"I believe, Miss Uhura, that yours might be a very unpopular opinion. You should not voice it outside of these walls."
She huffs a laugh. "Nyota," she reminds him.
He nods. Yet again, does not repeat her name.
"Well, thank you for taking the time to walk me through this." She hesitates for a second. "Would you mind if I stopped by again? To talk about all this stuff, and… you know. Ask questions?"
It would probably be best not to encourage her to come back. Unstructured meetings can be very time demanding, and he will need to submit several grants in the next few months. Any type of question she has could be easily redirected to one of his graduate students. Pavel, for example, has shown to be much more patient than Spock, and has an excellent grasp of the theoretical foundations that she will need to be familiar with to complete her project. Carol and Marlena, if he recalls correctly, have even taken Computational Linguistics classes during their Master's. They would both be more convenient options than Spock. For everyone involved.
"Of course. You are always welcome."
Spock never, ever lies.