Muhammad Ali, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Rosa Parks are Most Popular Historical Figures in Bamboo Luminaries

Award-winning skill developer Bamboo Learning has released its first report analyzing learner activities on its new, popular Alexa educational trivia game, Bamboo Luminaries. “We believe that insights from our unique data could further deepen our understanding of voice-powered learning,” said Irina Fine, co-founder and Head of Content at Bamboo Learning. “We hope to publish more reports like this in the future across the range of our voice-powered skills.”

In addition to Bamboo Luminaries, Bamboo Learning publishes Bamboo Books, Bamboo Math, Bamboo Music and Highlights Storybooks from Bamboo. Highlights Storybooks from Bamboo recently was named Education Voice Experience of the Year. 

Bamboo Luminaries is a trivia game that features 76 important historical figures in various categories like music, sports, and art. The company adds new Luminaries to the game every month.

In this report, three learner activities were analyzed during the month of January:

• requests for specific Luminaries
• ability to identify Luminaries based on clues
• answers to questions about Luminaries

Out of 76 Bamboo Luminaries, players requested these three the most

Top 3 Most Requested Luminaries	Category
1. Muhammad Ali	Sports
2. Georgia O’Keeffe	Art
3. Rosa Parks	Social Justice

Georgia O’Keeffe was the second-most popular Luminary, yet the third most difficult to identify based on clues

Bamboo Luminaries learners guess historical figures based on clues spoken by Alexa. In January, 83% correctly identified Martin Luther King Jr., but only 15% knew abolitionist and women’s rights activist Sojourner Truth. In fact, Sojourner Truth was the hardest historical figure for learners to identify. Similar to the recent quiz from The New York Times The Upshot, which asked readers to name 52 politicians, athletes, and celebrities based on their photos, Bamboo Luminaries challenges learners to identify a range of Luminaries, but by listening to and responding to Alexa.

3 Easiest Luminaries to Identify	% Players	3 Hardest Luminaries to Identify	% Players
1.   Martin Luther King Jr.	83%	1.   Sojourner Truth	15%
2.   Muhammad Ali	82%	2.   Alexander Graham Bell	20%
3.   King Tut	77%	3.   Georgia O’Keeffe	32%

“There tends to be a small group of very well-known people who dominate the cultural and historical narrative, but in reality there are many more people who shaped the world as we know it who are rarely discussed,” said Bamboo Learning CEO, Ian Freed. “Our first Bamboo Luminaries report demonstrates that we are on track to achieve our goal of creating a new, engaging, voice-based trivia game that helps the whole family learn more about history through the people that shape it.”

A World Heavyweight Champion at age 52?

The most surprising result of Bamboo Luminaries questions in January was that learners had trouble with whether Muhammad Ali won the World Heavyweight Championship at age 22 or 52. Bamboo Learning’s analysts surmised that most of the learners who answered this question were under the age of 40.

Question Type	Easiest	Hardest
Open-ended	Jackie Robinson was the first African American to play what professional sport?→ [baseball]	What has the United States Congress called Rosa Parks?→ [Both “the first lady of civil rights” and “the mother of the freedom movement” are accepted as correct answers]
Multiple choice	Did Jackie Robinson play in (A) 10 or (B) 6 World Series?→ [B = 6]	Did Muhammad Ali win the World Heavyweight Championship at age (A) 22 or (B) 52?→ [A = 22]
True or false	Harriet Tubman traveled with the slaves by night and in extreme secrecy. Is this true or false?→ [True]	King Tut lived during the period of Egyptian history known as the New Kingdom. Is this true or false?→ [True]

Bamboo Learning also added 30 new historical figures to Bamboo Luminaries. Following its approach to have both well-known and obscure Luminaries, the company included artist Frida Kahlo, scientist Albert Einstein, and architect Norma Merrick Sklarek. Below are two Luminaries lists. First, is a list of Luminaries from the January report for cross-referencing and second is a list of the additional Luminaries available starting today.

List of Bamboo Luminaries for January Report

Luminary	Category		Luminary	Category
Ada Lovelace	Science		Jackie Robinson	Sports
Agatha Christie	Literature		Jane Darwell	Film
Alexander Graham Bell	Science		Jane Froman	Music
Alice Marble	Sports		Johannes Vermeer	Art
Alvin Toffler	Literature		John Adams	History
Amelia Earhart	History		John Lennon	Music
Anders Celsius	Science		Jonas Salk	Science
Annie Besant	Social Justice		King Tut	History
Arthur Miller	Literature		Le Corbusier (Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris)	Architecture
Augustus	History		Mahalia Jackson	Music
B. B. King	Music		Mahatma Gandhi	Social Justice
Benjamin Banneker	Science		Malcom X	Social Justice
Charles Schulz	Literature		Margaret Thatcher	History
Claude Monet	Art		Marie Curie	Science
Edgar Mitchell	Science		Martin Luther King Jr.	Social Justice
Edwin Hubble	Science		Mary Jane McLeod Bethune	Social Justice
Eleanor Roosevelt	History		Michael Faraday	Science
F. Scott Fitzgerald	Literature		Muhammad Ali	Sports
Fyodor Dostoyevsky	Literature		Niels Bohr	Science
George Eliot	Literature		Oscar Wilde	Literature
George Gershwin	Music		Patti Page	Music
Georges Bizet	Music		Rachel Carson	Science
Georgia O’Keeffe	Art		Robert Louis Stevenson	Literature
Giuseppe Verdi	Music		Rosa Parks	Social Justice
Gloria Lynne	Music		Scott Joplin	Music
Gore Vidal	Literature		Sir William Golding	Literature
Grace Kelly	Film		Sojourner Truth	Social Justice
Greta Garbo	Film		Theodore Roosevelt	History
H. G. Wells	Literature		Thomas Nast	Art
Hans Christian Andersen	Literature		Thurgood Marshall	History
Harriet Tubman	Social Justice		Upton Sinclair	Literature
Helen Gahagan Douglas	History		Vaclav Havel	Social Justice
Helen Keller	Social Justice		Vincent Van Gogh	Art
Henri-Louis Bergson	Literature		Vivien Leigh	Film
Ida Bell Wells	Social Justice		Voltaire	Literature
Indira Gandhi	History		William Faulkner	Literature
Isamu Noguchi	Art		William Penn	History
Isao Takahata	Film		Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart	Music

New Luminaries Added Today (February 13, 2020)

Luminary	Category		Luminary	Category
Albert Einstein	Science		Ludwig van Beethoven	Music
Althea Gibson	Sports		Madam C. J. Walker	Social Justice
Anne Frank	Social Justice		Mary Jackson	Science
Babe Ruth	Sports		Maya Angelou	Literature
Charlie Chaplin	Film		Michelangelo	Art
Edith Cowan	Social Justice		Neil Armstrong	Science
Frida Kahlo	Art		Norma Merrick Sklarek	Architecture
Gabriel Garcia Marquez	Literature		Pablo Picasso	Art
Galileo Galilei	Science		Phillis Wheatley	Literature
Gautama Buddha	History		Robert Goddard	Science
Jacques Cousteau	Exploration		Sally Ride	Science
Johann Sebastian Bach	Music		Thomas Edison	Science
Julia Morgan	Architecture		Toni Morrison	Literature
Leonardo da Vinci	History		William Shakespeare	Literature
Lina Bo Bardi	Architecture		Wilma Rudolph	Sports

About Bamboo Luminaries: Bamboo Luminaries can be enabled for free in more than 80 countries by saying “Alexa, open Bamboo Luminaries” to any Alexa-enabled device. Bamboo Luminaries also can be enabled using the Alexa app or via Bamboo Learning at: www.bamboolearning.com. Players who have Alexa screen-based devices, including Echo Show, Fire TV Cube, Fire TV stick, and Fire tablets, can view images, text, and graphics that enhance the voice-first educational game. A video demo of Bamboo Luminaries can be found here: https://www.bamboolearning.com/luminariesdemo.

About Bamboo Learning: Based in Seattle, Bamboo Learning is the award-winning leader in voice-powered education with a mission to bring engaging, high-quality learning experiences to customers around the world. Bamboo Learning develops skills for Alexa that enable families, teens, and adults to have fun learning and practicing diverse subjects while listening, viewing images, and using their voice. The company earned the title Education Voice Developer of the Year from the Project Voice Awards 2020. Bamboo Learning’s Alexa skills, including Bamboo Luminaries, Bamboo Books, Bamboo Math, Bamboo Music, and Highlights Storybooks from Bamboo, offer a range of challenging and engaging exercises to help customers master different levels of subjects. Customers can sign up for a Bamboo Grove account to follow their progress in Bamboo Learning Alexa skills.

Bamboo’s co-founders are Ian Freed, CEO, and Irina Fine, COO and Head of Content. Ian Freed is a 30 year veteran of the technology industry, including 12 years at Amazon, having served as vice president of Amazon devices, where he led both the Amazon Echo and the Amazon Kindle businesses, and served as technical advisor to Amazon founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos. Irina Fine is a 30-year veteran of curriculum development and teaching, having worked in public and private sectors of education in New York, Washington DC, London, and Moscow, after receiving her M.Ed. in Curriculum Development and an undergraduate degree in Piano Performance and Music Education. Learn more at: www.bamboolearning.com.