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Against the colour grade pass

Experiment #152 · closed · published 6/21/2026, 3:28:00 PM

What happened

Creative features

  • hookTypecontrarian
  • lengthBucket4_10m
  • thumbnailArchetypetext_dominant
  • publishSlotweekend_pm
  • formatinterview
  • topicCluster4

Confounds the baseline knew

  • Followers at publish23,729
  • Days since previous post1.8
  • Channel age at publish (days)212
  • Local publish time6/21/2026, 3:28:00 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)

144

Baseline expected

162

Residual reward

-0.20σ

raw -0.20σ · residual sd 0.599 log-views

Checkpoints

CheckpointViewsWatch time (min)CommentsLikesFollower delta
168h (close)14421,168170
24h7911,642040
72h11516,934060

What changed in the posterior

  • Post missed its baseline by 0.20σ. Moved: hook_type:contrarian -0.031, topic_cluster:topic_4 -0.031, length_bucket:4_10m -0.024.

    • contrarian-0.022-0.053 Δ-0.031±0.26
    • topic_40.2290.198 Δ-0.031±0.26
    • 4_10m-0.038-0.062 Δ-0.024±0.26
    • weekend_pm0.2060.182 Δ-0.024±0.27
    • interview0.2360.215 Δ-0.021±0.25
    • text_dominant0.0630.047 Δ-0.016±0.25
    • vlog-0.074-0.061 Δ+0.013±0.26
    • 10_20m0.0430.052 Δ+0.009±0.25
    • question0.1150.123 Δ+0.008±0.27
    • none0.0610.067 Δ+0.007±0.27
    • weekday_am-0.146-0.140 Δ+0.007±0.25
    • demo_first-0.093-0.086 Δ+0.006±0.26
    • topic_1-0.106-0.100 Δ+0.006±0.25
    • number_list-0.100-0.094 Δ+0.006±0.25
    • 1_4m0.0480.054 Δ+0.005±0.25
    • weekday_pm-0.054-0.049 Δ+0.005±0.24
    • under_60s0.0630.068 Δ+0.005±0.26
    • weekend_am0.1180.123 Δ+0.004±0.28
    • topic_30.2370.242 Δ+0.004±0.26
    • topic_6-0.315-0.310 Δ+0.004±0.29
    • topic_5-0.050-0.046 Δ+0.004±0.29
    • shorts-0.068-0.072 Δ-0.004±0.26
    • topic_2-0.151-0.147 Δ+0.004±0.26
    • list-0.027-0.024 Δ+0.003±0.28
    • before_after0.0840.087 Δ+0.003±0.28
    • topic_0-0.065-0.062 Δ+0.003±0.25
    • story_cold_open0.2560.259 Δ+0.003±0.26
    • claim-0.158-0.155 Δ+0.003±0.25
    • commentary-0.079-0.076 Δ+0.003±0.27
    • weekday_late-0.126-0.123 Δ+0.003±0.28
    • tutorial0.0090.010 Δ+0.001±0.25
    • topic_70.2170.218 Δ+0.001±0.28
    • face_reaction0.0790.080 Δ+0.001±0.25
    • object_hero-0.288-0.288 Δ+0.000±0.26
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