Mathematicians have lots of interests outside of mathematics (we are large, we contain multitudes). I enjoy running (slowly, these days). Back in grad school, I swam laps with my friends and officemates Mike Tait and Jay Cummings—we were lucky to go to grad school in San Diego, where you can swim outdoors year-round. Like most Duke alums, I am a fan of college basketball, and I watch a lot of Duke basketball games. You should ask me about the Krzyzewskiville experience some time. I am fan of Trappist monks and the beers that they brew.
Some of my interests have resulted in things that I can brag about, which I will now do.
Crosswords
I enjoy all kinds of word games, but especially crosswords and cryptic crosswords. I also dabble a bit in crossword construction, and have two published puzzles in major venues.
| Won, Robert. “I’ll Hazard a Guess,” The Wall Street Journal. April 20, 2023. | WSJ Link Puzzle pdf / Solution pdf |
| Won, Robert. The Daily Crossword (Tuesday), The New York Times. June 14, 2022. | NY Times Link (requires subscription) Wordplay blog |
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I have also constructed crossword puzzles for three wedding receptions (and a mini crossword for a save-the-date!). If you’d like to talk crossword construction, feel free to reach out!
Trivia
One of my favorite pastimes is pub trivia with friends. As a postdoc at Wake Forest, I regularly joined the Masters students for trivia at Foothills Brewing. When we were all postdocs at UW, Dami Lee, Bennet Goeckner, and I (together with Hilary Goeckner) comprised the core of a fun pub trivia team. You can also find me as WonR on LearnedLeague.
In July 2022, I was on Jeopardy!, which was an incredible experience. I returned in October 2023 for the inaugural Champion’s Wildcard Competition.
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| Jeopardy! July 8, 2022. | J! Archive IMDb |
| Jeopardy! July 11, 2022. | J! Archive IMDb |
| Jeopardy! Champions Wildcard Competition October 11, 2022 | J! Archive IMDb |
If you count my appearance on Jeopardy! with Mayim Bialik, then my Bacon number is 3 (Robert Won ➔ Mayim Bialik ➔ Phil Leeds ➔ Kevin Bacon). This gives me an Erdős-Bacon number of 6. If you’re a Bacon-number-purist (movies only), then my Bacon number is infinite, and please cast me in your next movie. (My acting experience begins and ends with a one-act play when I was in seventh grade.)
Neuroscience
As an undergraduate, I had an interest in cognitive neuroscience and neuroeconomics. I spent several years as a research assistant in the Woldorff Lab at Duke University and I also spent a summer at the Glimcher Lab at the NYU Center for Neural Science, where I was mentored by Hiroshi Yamada.
Working with Greg Appelbaum at Duke got my name on a couple of publications in neuroscience, though I have forgotten almost everything I once knew.
| Appelbaum, L.G., Boehler, C.N., Davis, L.A., Won, R.J., Woldorff, M.G. (2014). “The dynamics of proactive and reactive cognitive control processes in the human brain”. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 26(5), 1021–1038. | Journal PubMed |
| Appelbaum, L.G., Boehler, C.N., Won, R.J., Davis, L.A., Woldorff, M.G. (2012). “Strategic Allocation of Attention Reduces Temporally Predictable Stimulus Conflict”. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 24(9), 1834–1848. | Journal PubMed |
The word amateur has come by the thousand oddities of language to convey an idea of tepidity; whereas the word itself has the meaning of passion. […] A man must love a thing very much if he not only practises it without any hope of fame or money, but even practises it without any hope of doing it well. Such a man must love the toils of the work more than any other man can love the rewards of it.
― Robert Browning, G.K. Chesterton