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Everyone is wrong about the colour grade pass

Experiment #193 · closed · published 8/18/2026, 3:05:00 PM

What happened

Creative features

  • hookTypecontrarian
  • lengthBucketunder_60s
  • thumbnailArchetypenone
  • publishSlotweekday_pm
  • formatvlog
  • topicCluster4

Confounds the baseline knew

  • Followers at publish28,590
  • Days since previous post1.9
  • Channel age at publish (days)270
  • Local publish time8/18/2026, 3:05:00 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)

143

Baseline expected

155

Residual reward

-0.13σ

raw -0.13σ · residual sd 0.599 log-views

Checkpoints

CheckpointViewsWatch time (min)CommentsLikesFollower delta
168h (close)1432,002170
24h791,101040
72h1141,602060

What changed in the posterior

  • Post missed its baseline by 0.13σ. Moved: topic_cluster:topic_4 -0.011, hook_type:contrarian -0.007, length_bucket:under_60s -0.007.

    • topic_40.1600.149 Δ-0.011±0.25
    • contrarian-0.036-0.044 Δ-0.007±0.25
    • under_60s0.1220.115 Δ-0.007±0.25
    • none0.0820.075 Δ-0.007±0.25
    • vlog-0.070-0.077 Δ-0.006±0.25
    • weekday_pm-0.029-0.033 Δ-0.004±0.23
    • question0.2320.236 Δ+0.004±0.25
    • topic_0-0.054-0.050 Δ+0.003±0.24
    • weekend_pm0.1100.113 Δ+0.003±0.25
    • face_reaction0.0980.101 Δ+0.003±0.24
    • topic_70.1580.160 Δ+0.002±0.26
    • 4_10m-0.109-0.107 Δ+0.002±0.25
    • demo_first-0.051-0.049 Δ+0.002±0.25
    • topic_2-0.261-0.259 Δ+0.002±0.25
    • 1_4m0.0370.039 Δ+0.002±0.25
    • list0.0070.008 Δ+0.002±0.27
    • text_dominant0.0630.065 Δ+0.002±0.24
    • shorts-0.054-0.052 Δ+0.001±0.25
    • weekday_am-0.094-0.093 Δ+0.001±0.24
    • topic_1-0.023-0.022 Δ+0.001±0.24
    • object_hero-0.289-0.288 Δ+0.001±0.25
    • weekday_late-0.162-0.163 Δ-0.001±0.27
    • commentary0.0230.024 Δ+0.001±0.25
    • tutorial0.0170.018 Δ+0.001±0.24
    • 20m_plus-0.118-0.118 Δ+0.001±0.25
    • story_cold_open0.1780.178 Δ-0.001±0.25
    • interview0.0590.060 Δ+0.001±0.24
    • topic_30.2000.201 Δ+0.001±0.25
    • 10_20m0.0510.051 Δ+0.001±0.24
    • topic_6-0.278-0.279 Δ-0.000±0.26
    • number_list-0.108-0.108 Δ+0.000±0.24
    • claim-0.233-0.233 Δ+0.000±0.24
    • weekend_am0.1570.157 Δ-0.000±0.28
    • topic_50.0800.080 Δ+0.000±0.26
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