Comment by chociej

It also depends heavily on how you define "need". Calculus changed the way I view many, many concepts and phenomena. I think we present things like calculus as dryly as possible, and only to those blessed few who we perceive as able to understand it, and in doing so, we deprive so many people of a useful new way of considering problems. Whether it ends up being critical to their chosen career seems like a really narrow and poor criterion.