RATCHET
Skip to main content

Everyone is wrong about the colour grade pass

Experiment #166 · closed · published 7/11/2026, 2:14:00 PM

What happened

Creative features

  • hookTypecontrarian
  • lengthBucketunder_60s
  • thumbnailArchetypeface_reaction
  • publishSlotweekend_pm
  • formattutorial
  • topicCluster3

Confounds the baseline knew

  • Followers at publish25,300
  • Days since previous post0.7
  • Channel age at publish (days)232
  • Local publish time7/11/2026, 2:14:00 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)

237

Baseline expected

187

Residual reward

+0.39σ

raw 0.39σ · residual sd 0.599 log-views

Checkpoints

CheckpointViewsWatch time (min)CommentsLikesFollower delta
168h (close)2373,3181120
24h1301,825170
72h1902,654190

What changed in the posterior

  • Post beat its baseline by 0.39σ. Moved: hook_type:contrarian -0.004, topic_cluster:topic_3 -0.004, publish_slot:weekend_pm -0.003.

    • contrarian-0.033-0.037 Δ-0.004±0.26
    • topic_30.2610.257 Δ-0.004±0.25
    • weekend_pm0.1580.155 Δ-0.003±0.26
    • under_60s0.0810.078 Δ-0.003±0.26
    • face_reaction0.0620.060 Δ-0.002±0.25
    • tutorial-0.011-0.013 Δ-0.002±0.24
    • story_cold_open0.2180.220 Δ+0.002±0.25
    • weekend_am0.1380.140 Δ+0.001±0.28
    • topic_70.1710.172 Δ+0.001±0.27
    • none0.0670.067 Δ+0.001±0.26
    • 10_20m0.0580.059 Δ+0.001±0.25
    • topic_5-0.033-0.033 Δ+0.001±0.27
    • 4_10m-0.104-0.103 Δ+0.001±0.25
    • claim-0.173-0.173 Δ+0.001±0.25
    • vlog-0.052-0.051 Δ+0.001±0.26
    • object_hero-0.281-0.280 Δ+0.001±0.26
    • interview0.1560.157 Δ+0.001±0.24
    • commentary-0.025-0.024 Δ+0.001±0.26
    • topic_0-0.030-0.029 Δ+0.001±0.25
    • weekday_pm-0.040-0.040 Δ+0.001±0.24
    • weekday_am-0.133-0.132 Δ+0.001±0.25
    • topic_40.1740.174 Δ+0.001±0.25
    • shorts-0.054-0.054 Δ-0.000±0.26
    • 1_4m0.0550.055 Δ+0.000±0.25
    • question0.1630.164 Δ+0.000±0.26
    • topic_2-0.183-0.182 Δ+0.000±0.26
    • demo_first-0.094-0.094 Δ+0.000±0.25
    • list-0.023-0.023 Δ-0.000±0.27
    • topic_6-0.287-0.287 Δ-0.000±0.28
    • topic_1-0.080-0.081 Δ-0.000±0.25
    • number_list-0.089-0.089 Δ+0.000±0.25
    • weekday_late-0.131-0.131 Δ+0.000±0.27
    • 20m_plus-0.098-0.098 Δ-0.000±0.27
    • before_after0.0890.089 Δ-0.000±0.27
← Back to the experiment ledger