Works to read here on Algebraic Topology

Problems for the course "Topology 2" (F. E. Vylegzhanin, Independent University of Moscow, autumn 2026), sheet 2 of 16 September 2026 — singular homology and chain homotopies. A chain map from simplicial to singular chains; retractions and direct summands; the Hurewicz homomorphism from the fundamental group to the first homology; finite CW complexes and homology classes; homology of a union of a chain of spaces; homology of a simplex and of its skeleton; simplicial maps; the chain homotopy equivalence between a complex and its homology; chain homotopy as an equivalence relation; the five lemma.

Problems for the course "Topology 2" (F. E. Vylegzhanin, Independent University of Moscow, autumn 2026), sheet 1 of 9 September 2026 — simplicial homology and chain complexes. Zeroth homology and connected components; homology of a disjoint union and of a wedge; triangulations of the circle, the sphere and the Möbius band; the join and the product of simplicial complexes; the Euler characteristic and the Morse inequalities; the number of vertices of a triangulated surface; operations on chain complexes; exact sequences; the Smith normal form and the splitting of a complex.

Singular homology — standard simplices and the inclusions of facets, singular simplices and chains, the differential; zeroth homology and path components, the homology of a point, reduced homology; chain maps and maps of homology, functoriality, the chain map induced by a continuous map; chain homotopies and the prism; the homotopy invariance theorem with a full proof via the prism operator; subcomplexes, quotient complexes and the homology of a pair.

Where simplicial homology shows up in real life — topological data analysis. The union of balls around a point cloud, persistence modules and their decomposition into a sum of interval modules over a field (the structure theorem and the algorithm), the barcode; the Vietoris–Rips and Čech complexes; the stability theorem for barcodes, the Hausdorff, Gromov–Hausdorff and Wasserstein distances; open covers and their nerves, Leray covers and the nerve theorem, the category of covers, paracompactness, Lebesgue covering dimension, Čech homology and cohomology.