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Watch this the cheap lens test

Experiment #123 · closed · published 5/12/2026, 7:37:00 AM

What happened

Creative features

  • hookTypedemo_first
  • lengthBucketunder_60s
  • thumbnailArchetypeobject_hero
  • publishSlotweekday_am
  • formatshorts
  • topicCluster7

Confounds the baseline knew

  • Followers at publish20,844
  • Days since previous post2
  • Channel age at publish (days)172
  • Local publish time5/12/2026, 7:37:00 AM

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)

91

Baseline expected

105

Residual reward

-0.24σ

raw -0.24σ · residual sd 0.599 log-views

Checkpoints

CheckpointViewsWatch time (min)CommentsLikesFollower delta
168h (close)911,274050
24h50701030
72h731,019040

What changed in the posterior

  • Post missed its baseline by 0.24σ. Moved: topic_cluster:topic_7 -0.010, format:shorts -0.007, length_bucket:under_60s -0.006.

    • topic_70.1600.150 Δ-0.010±0.30
    • shorts0.1670.160 Δ-0.007±0.27
    • under_60s0.1060.100 Δ-0.006±0.27
    • demo_first-0.021-0.028 Δ-0.006±0.26
    • weekday_am-0.144-0.150 Δ-0.006±0.27
    • object_hero-0.335-0.340 Δ-0.005±0.28
    • topic_40.1760.179 Δ+0.003±0.27
    • topic_30.2780.281 Δ+0.003±0.27
    • commentary-0.167-0.164 Δ+0.003±0.28
    • before_after0.0810.083 Δ+0.002±0.30
    • 10_20m0.0730.075 Δ+0.002±0.26
    • weekend_am0.1230.125 Δ+0.002±0.30
    • weekday_pm-0.081-0.079 Δ+0.002±0.25
    • weekday_late-0.273-0.271 Δ+0.002±0.29
    • 4_10m-0.223-0.222 Δ+0.001±0.28
    • weekend_pm0.3760.375 Δ-0.001±0.29
    • contrarian-0.045-0.044 Δ+0.001±0.28
    • topic_6-0.508-0.507 Δ+0.001±0.33
    • claim-0.050-0.048 Δ+0.001±0.29
    • face_reaction0.0690.071 Δ+0.001±0.26
    • list0.0410.042 Δ+0.001±0.30
    • story_cold_open0.2090.210 Δ+0.001±0.27
    • 1_4m-0.034-0.033 Δ+0.001±0.26
    • interview0.0980.099 Δ+0.001±0.27
    • number_list-0.189-0.189 Δ+0.001±0.27
    • topic_0-0.084-0.083 Δ+0.001±0.27
    • vlog-0.161-0.160 Δ+0.001±0.27
    • topic_1-0.034-0.034 Δ+0.000±0.27
    • none0.0830.084 Δ+0.000±0.28
    • topic_2-0.101-0.101 Δ+0.000±0.27
    • question0.0970.097 Δ+0.000±0.28
    • 20m_plus0.0780.078 Δ+0.000±0.28
    • text_dominant0.1020.102 Δ+0.000±0.26
    • tutorial0.0230.023 Δ+0.000±0.26
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