Suspicious date: 1960-01-01

[onyxfish]

Via Chris Wright: "I wanted to add that the date 1960-01-01 can also be a suspicious date as this is the 0 date for a data manipulation program called SAS. It looks like your guide is aimed at journalists and amateur data investigators, so probably less common for people in those situations."

[MonkmanMH]

@onyxfish - While I agree that SAS won't be used by everyone, it seems to me that the Quartz Bad Data Guide is being read by a wide range of data investigators, including those who may be using SAS or importing SAS data files. If my perceptions are correct, then the more of these suspicious dates (and other idiosyncratic behaviours) that are documented, the better.
I, for one, did not know this about SAS...so thanks for the knowledge!

[bwiernik]

Similarly, the dates 1900-12-30 and 1904-01-01 should also be seen as suspicious, as they are the origins for Excel for Windows/Mac.
https://www.r-bloggers.com/date-formats-in-r/

More generally, lots of databases also replace missing date parts with “01”, so it is a good idea to regard dates for the first of the month (and for Jan 01, both the month and day) as suggesting more precision than is warranted unless checked.