Instead, it does seem they put some thoughts behind this system. Roughly these tables seem to show some progression of power, but it's not just taht, so it would be nice to have an explanation.

And yes, reverse-engineering is what I was trying to do here. It could be useful for example if you are looking for a certain degree of "low-magic"/"mid-magic"/"high-magic". If we knew more about how each table is built, then we wouldn't need to check all the magic items one-by-one.