Are column ordering taken into account when creating statistics for Microsoft SQL Server?

Question

The Database Engine Tuning Advisor recommended creating some statistics for several of our queries. It turns out that some of them are the same, only the column order is different from the CREATE STATISTICS command. For example:

CREATE STATISTICS [StatName1] ON [dbo].[table1]([column2], [column1])

CREATE STATISTICS [StatName2] ON [dbo].[table1]([column1], [column2])

Are they the same or are they different?

On the same lines can I combine the CREATE STATISTICS command for a given table? If the adviser recommended 3 different statistics in one column for three different queries, can I make one create command for all 3 columns, for example.

CREATE STATISTICS [StatName1] ON [dbo].[table1]([column1], [column3])

CREATE STATISTICS [StatName2] ON [dbo].[table1]([column1], [column2])

in

CREATE STATISTICS [StatName1] ON [dbo].[table1]([column1], [column2], [column3])

thanks

Answer 1

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