It is hopefully in the meantime well known that Oracle has introduced in version 11g a new algorithm to gather statistics on a table that no longer requires sorting for determining the critical Number Of Distinct Values (NDV) figure - it instead uses a clever "approximate NDV" algorithm which always reads 100% of the table data and therefore in principle generates very accurate statistics. This new algorithm gets used only when the ESTIMATE_PERCENT parameter to the DBMS_STATS.GATHER*STATS calls is left at default or explicitly passed as "DBMS_STATS.AUTO_SAMPLE_SIZE". This new algorithm is also required in case other new features like "Incremental Statistics" should be used.
In 12c Oracle improved this algorithm allowing the generation of Frequency and the new Top Frequency histogram types in a single pass. The new Hybrid histogram type still requires a separate pass.