Steps up or down is Carpenter’s quantitative pairwise progression: a count, a size, an angle or a position changes by a fixed amount between neighbouring cells. In the APM it rarely comes alone; the bank’s seriation items run monotonic steps, alternating or cyclic sequences, and crossed row and column series, often two independent series at once.
What you see: a number, a size, an angle or a place moving by the same amount each cell. What you do: find the step, and the direction, per element.