Makes sure no extra dimensions are floating around in the input arrays
        Returns inferred dict of variable: val pairs

def _squeeze(self, var_tbl: dict) -> dict:
        """
        Makes sure no extra dimensions are floating around in the input arrays
        Returns inferred dict of variable: val pairs
        """
        var_names = var_tbl.copy()
        # squeeze any numpy arrays
        for v in var_tbl:
            val = var_tbl[v]
            if isinstance(val, np.ndarray):
                var_names[v] = val.squeeze()
        return var_names