I guess the original sin here is that some valuable statistical information has been deleted forever. I would never delete such data until I had squirreled it away somewhere. No telling when some manager is going to ask questions like "I need to know what the hourly average of online sessions was per hour per day for the last 6 months with a comparison of that same time frame from a year ago so we can show our stockholders how business has improved from an online perspective." The look on his/her face will be extra special when you tell him/her that you deleted it even if it were because that same manager told you to do the deletes.

Protect the less informed and yourself... never delete data until you know you can get it back and have tested it. 😉