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The truth about shooting in one take

Experiment #161 · closed · published 7/4/2026, 7:28:00 PM

What happened

Creative features

  • hookTypeclaim
  • lengthBucket1_4m
  • thumbnailArchetypeface_reaction
  • publishSlotweekend_pm
  • formattutorial
  • topicCluster5

Confounds the baseline knew

  • Followers at publish24,755
  • Days since previous post2.1
  • Channel age at publish (days)225
  • Local publish time7/4/2026, 7:28:00 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)

174

Baseline expected

196

Residual reward

-0.20σ

raw -0.20σ · residual sd 0.599 log-views

Checkpoints

CheckpointViewsWatch time (min)CommentsLikesFollower delta
168h (close)1749,135190
24h965,024050
72h1397,308170

What changed in the posterior

  • Post missed its baseline by 0.20σ. Moved: topic_cluster:topic_5 -0.012, publish_slot:weekend_pm -0.008, hook_type:claim -0.006.

    • topic_5-0.040-0.052 Δ-0.012±0.28
    • weekend_pm0.1590.152 Δ-0.008±0.27
    • claim-0.157-0.163 Δ-0.006±0.25
    • face_reaction0.0660.061 Δ-0.005±0.25
    • 1_4m0.0580.053 Δ-0.005±0.25
    • tutorial-0.005-0.010 Δ-0.005±0.25
    • weekday_pm-0.043-0.039 Δ+0.003±0.24
    • 10_20m0.0540.057 Δ+0.003±0.25
    • topic_30.2720.274 Δ+0.002±0.26
    • topic_6-0.301-0.299 Δ+0.002±0.28
    • contrarian-0.023-0.022 Δ+0.002±0.26
    • story_cold_open0.2170.219 Δ+0.002±0.25
    • topic_1-0.085-0.084 Δ+0.002±0.25
    • vlog-0.058-0.057 Δ+0.001±0.26
    • topic_0-0.033-0.032 Δ+0.001±0.25
    • topic_40.1690.171 Δ+0.001±0.25
    • 20m_plus-0.104-0.106 Δ-0.001±0.27
    • text_dominant0.0670.068 Δ+0.001±0.25
    • topic_70.1960.197 Δ+0.001±0.27
    • object_hero-0.281-0.280 Δ+0.001±0.26
    • under_60s0.0710.072 Δ+0.001±0.26
    • weekend_am0.1250.126 Δ+0.001±0.28
    • before_after0.0770.077 Δ+0.001±0.28
    • shorts-0.058-0.057 Δ+0.001±0.26
    • interview0.1730.174 Δ+0.001±0.25
    • weekday_am-0.138-0.137 Δ+0.001±0.25
    • weekday_late-0.112-0.111 Δ+0.001±0.28
    • topic_2-0.185-0.184 Δ+0.000±0.26
    • number_list-0.094-0.094 Δ+0.000±0.25
    • question0.1460.146 Δ-0.000±0.26
    • demo_first-0.097-0.097 Δ+0.000±0.25
    • commentary-0.039-0.039 Δ-0.000±0.26
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