First, your point about planning time is important, thanks for adding that. Regarding my point, it's possible that the planner may provide a better (on average

First, your point about planning time is important, thanks for adding that. Regarding my point, it's possible that the planner may provide a better (on average, faster executed) plan for a given key, if that key is not found in stats, and that keys for which this is true may fit a pattern within the middle of the stats distribution. It all depends on the database schema and stats distributions.