Analyze a table results in huge num_rows count

Hi.
I have a heap table with 3.3 million rows. When this table is analyzed with the old "analyze table .... estimate statistics." the num_rows is pretty accurate.
But when I run the following command the num_rows shows as 1,008,678,067 !!!!!.  

EXEC
DBMS_STATS.GATHER_TABLE_STATS(USER,TABLE_NAME,NULL,.35554,FALSE,NULL,NUL L,'DEFAULT',TRUE,NULL,NULL,NULL,FALSE);   I've also noticed that if I change the ESTIMATE_PERCENT to a lower number, the num_rows increases to even higher numbers (more than 2 billion !!!).  

This of course impacts the execution plan.  

Table has only number. date and varchar2 columns . Number of column is 12.  

We are on Oracle 9.2.0.6.  

Any idea what's going on??  

TIA   Yuval.  

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