Order patterns apply well to many fields, because of minimal stationarity assumptions. Here, we fix the methodology of patterns of length 3 by introducing an orthogonal system of four pattern contrasts, that is, weighted differences of pattern frequencies. These contrasts are statistically independent and turn up as eigenvectors of a covariance matrix both in the independence model and the random walk model. The most important contrast is the turning rate. It can be used to evaluate sleep depth directly from EEG (electroencephalographic brain data). The paper discusses fluctuations of permutation entropy, statistical tests, and the need of new models for noises like EEG.