Middle School Intersession 2025

In this session we introduce the concept of word embeddings as a proxy for "meaning" and explain the intuition of how they play an important role in modern AI systems. We will begin by starting with a simpler example - colors - and show how we can use a simple 3-dimensional vector to represent colors. We will then show the intuition of distance between colors and how colors that are closer to each other in distance are also closer to each other visually. We will then connect the concept of vectors to represent colors to vector in a higher dimension space that can represent the "meaning" of words and then show how words that have similar meaning will be closer to each other.

You may have heard about Jackie Robinson and his breaking of the color barrier in baseball, but have you heard the history of the Negro Leagues and how baseball was segregated in the first place? Can you name some women baseball players who were also Negro League stars (yes, they could play baseball in the Negro Leagues even if not for Major League Baseball)? Did you know that baseball was one of the incarceration camp sports for Japanese Americans during World War II?

If these questions sound interesting and you'd like to learn more, please come join a discussion about the history of baseball in America that you may not have heard before, focusing on the Negro Leagues and baseball in the wartime incarceration camps. We'll be using books that involve primary sources to build our knowledge of this part of our country's history, and think about how this impacts sports as we watch and understand them today, with a focus on sports as sources of resistance and joy in 2025 and beyond.

You may have heard about Jackie Robinson and his breaking of the color barrier in baseball, but have you heard the history of the Negro Leagues and how baseball was segregated in the first place? Can you name some women baseball players who were also Negro League stars (yes, they could play baseball in the Negro Leagues even if not for Major League Baseball)? Did you know that baseball was one of the incarceration camp sports for Japanese Americans during World War II?

If these questions sound interesting and you'd like to learn more, please come join a discussion about the history of baseball in America that you may not have heard before, focusing on the Negro Leagues and baseball in the wartime incarceration camps. We'll be using books that involve primary sources to build our knowledge of this part of our country's history, and think about how this impacts sports as we watch and understand them today, with a focus on sports as sources of resistance and joy in 2025 and beyond.