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Why does the colour grade pass

Experiment #119 · closed · published 5/6/2026, 5:47:00 PM

What happened

Creative features

  • hookTypequestion
  • lengthBucket20m_plus
  • thumbnailArchetypeface_reaction
  • publishSlotweekday_pm
  • formatinterview
  • topicCluster3

Confounds the baseline knew

  • Followers at publish20,474
  • Days since previous post2.2
  • Channel age at publish (days)166
  • Local publish time5/6/2026, 5:47:00 PM

The residual reward

Raw views mostly measure how big the channel already was. The baseline predicts what this channel “should” have earned given the confounds above; the residual is how the post actually landed relative to that prediction — measured in standard deviations.

Observed (168h)

148

Baseline expected

134

Residual reward

+0.17σ

raw 0.17σ · residual sd 0.599 log-views

Checkpoints

CheckpointViewsWatch time (min)CommentsLikesFollower delta
168h (close)14877,700170
24h8142,735040
72h11862,160060

What changed in the posterior

  • Post beat its baseline by 0.17σ. Moved: topic_cluster:topic_3 -0.020, hook_type:question -0.014, length_bucket:20m_plus -0.013.

    • topic_30.3110.291 Δ-0.020±0.28
    • question0.1060.092 Δ-0.014±0.28
    • 20m_plus0.0930.080 Δ-0.013±0.28
    • interview0.1130.103 Δ-0.010±0.27
    • weekday_pm-0.091-0.100 Δ-0.010±0.25
    • face_reaction0.0520.043 Δ-0.008±0.26
    • under_60s0.1300.136 Δ+0.006±0.28
    • shorts0.1750.181 Δ+0.006±0.28
    • topic_6-0.497-0.491 Δ+0.006±0.33
    • demo_first-0.025-0.019 Δ+0.006±0.27
    • topic_1-0.034-0.030 Δ+0.005±0.27
    • weekday_late-0.285-0.280 Δ+0.004±0.29
    • 4_10m-0.227-0.223 Δ+0.004±0.28
    • before_after0.0890.093 Δ+0.004±0.30
    • weekend_am0.1270.131 Δ+0.004±0.30
    • topic_0-0.067-0.064 Δ+0.003±0.27
    • topic_70.1790.182 Δ+0.003±0.31
    • claim-0.044-0.041 Δ+0.003±0.29
    • vlog-0.147-0.144 Δ+0.003±0.27
    • text_dominant0.1040.107 Δ+0.003±0.26
    • tutorial-0.013-0.010 Δ+0.003±0.26
    • number_list-0.177-0.175 Δ+0.002±0.27
    • weekday_am-0.126-0.123 Δ+0.002±0.27
    • none0.1010.103 Δ+0.002±0.28
    • contrarian-0.020-0.018 Δ+0.002±0.28
    • commentary-0.161-0.163 Δ-0.002±0.28
    • topic_50.1160.117 Δ+0.001±0.30
    • 1_4m-0.017-0.015 Δ+0.001±0.26
    • 10_20m0.0290.030 Δ+0.001±0.26
    • story_cold_open0.1680.169 Δ+0.001±0.27
    • weekend_pm0.3820.381 Δ-0.001±0.29
    • topic_40.1680.168 Δ+0.001±0.27
    • topic_2-0.167-0.167 Δ+0.000±0.28
    • list0.0410.041 Δ-0.000±0.30
    • object_hero-0.338-0.338 Δ-0.000±0.28
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