Pseudo-quantitative numbers are used when it useful to give something a quantiative score, but that score is determined from non-quantative or unmeasurable information.
For example, in risk management, the impact of a risk might be scored on a scale of one to three. The buckets 1-3 might have descriptions such as "low, medium, and high" or criteria like 1 is "less than a day of work to recover" and 3 is "we will go out of business".