dbms_stats default

I was looking at the dbms_stats package and noticed that the gather_table_stats procedure defaults to gathering statistics for all columns on a table. It seems to me that the only columns I would want to gather stats on would be those that are indexed. Does anybody know if the optimizer can do anything with stats on non indexed columns? It can't effect join order but does it affect how predicates in the where clause are applied? Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

John Received on Thu Dec 19 2002 - 22:48:12 CST