I'm sorry, but this has me baffled.
Need? If you're changing oil when it NEEDS to be changed, you're waiting a bit long. Generally speaking, you want to change the oil while there are still some good properties left in the oil. Additives and what have you. Ultimately, every oil change you perform is before it is actually "needed," if that weren't the case, your engine would be getting additional wear in the last few hundred miles.
So if you're changing every 5k, 4500 vs. 5500 makes no difference whatsoever. At one point, oil quality might be at 20%, and the other at 15%. Both are still good times to change it.
I dunno, my take is that changing oil should be done at a good round interval. The better the state your oil is in, the better it will protect your engine. And so long as a guy's "round" number isn't 2500-3000 miles, he's not wasting that much. Like it or not, most people use round numbers. It wasn't that long ago that oil life sensors became mainstream. And for quite some time, everyone followed the 3000 rule.
Meh, you can give a guy crap for nice round numbers, but the reality is, so long as he's getting it done at some sort of routine interval, he's doing a good job of maintaining his engine.