Instinctively, it's where you'd vacuum and I'm guessing the analyse just gets typed at the same time from habit (I know I've done so more than once). Of course, it flattens your stats and your import can then take forever.
So - would it be worth, in the case of vacuum+analyse (but not analyse alone), where the table is completely empty then just halve the existing stats.
That way, if you're in the middle of a delete/replace cycle your stats will still be in the realms of reasonableness. On the other hand, if the table is genuinely empty and you're running a nightly vacuum the stats will tend toward 0.
Against the idea:
1. It's a special-case in the code
2. There's a work-around (unless you're running pg_autovacuum I'd guess)
2. We perhaps want a more general table description (this is a bulk-loading table, this is a log table, this is a mostly static lookup table)
-- Richard Huxton Archonet Ltd
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