Talk:DJIA divisor

Why do we need two examples explaining the exact same thing? I think one should be removed.Es330td (talk) 15:20, 16 September 2008 (UTC) Agreed. Removing the second example. Agent Zero (talk) 19:59, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Reason for Change in Divisor
Since the divisor does not change often, I think it would be a good idea to create a chart showing date of change, divisor before & after, and reason for change (such as company being substituted, merger, share split, etc). I noticed that the second last change was noted in the explanation to changes in the history section, however, the last change has no explanation. If someone thinks the chart may get too long, maybe it can be limited to the 10 or 20 most recent changes. Just a thought. Juve2000 (talk) 04:15, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

The value of the divisor
It's claimed without citing a reference that "The current value of the Dow Divisor was 0.130216081 as of March 6, 2013". (The number appears to have come from Barron's.) No units such as USD are assigned to the value, which is interesting given that the DJIA is almost never published with units of its own, esp. by Dow Jones Indexes, and the average, so called, appears to be dimensionless. In fact, I've encountered just one case of the DJIA being stated with units. So if the article's stated value were correct, then the DJIA would have units of USD/share.

Since USD are in the numerator of the expression from which the DJIA is calculated, it stands to reason that USD are in the denominator, too, even if Dow Jones Indexes does not publish units for the divisor. (Maybe they're trying to obscure as much as they can about their famous index lest they lose control of it.) This fact about the denominator should be indicated in the article along with a source. Granted, I'm assuming that someone has done relevant research and published the results, but the assumption seems reasonable given the fame of the index and the attention paid to it in business schools and econ departments. And we could carry the analysis of the divisor a little farther by doing a dimensional analysis of the equation, which is lacking references both in this article and in the article for the DJIA. Notice that the numerator has units not merely of currency but of currency units per share.

The article would bear other improvements, too. At present it invites questions questions such as: From where did the phrases "DJIA Divisor" and "Dow Divisor" come from? Does Dow Jones use either consistently? What's the formula for calculating the DJIAD?

50.194.104.82 (talk) 19:40, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Calculation of the Divisor
Although the calculation of the average isn't too complicated, the calculation of the divisor is: especially for those without a background in statistics. I propose a more in depth explanation of where this magical denominator comes from (with more citaitons). I found these articles with great explanations of the divisor's calculation:

-http://www.1728.org/dowjone2.htm

-https://www.djaverages.com/?go=industrial-calculation

-http://www.djindexes.com/mdsidx/html/avgMethod.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by SlamDewey (talk • contribs) 14:46, 25 April 2016 (UTC)