Subject: A response to textbook question (Tom Goodwillie) Date: Sun, 29 Feb 2004 17:26:11 +0100 (CET) From: rade@mi.sanu.ac.yu To: "Don Davis" CC: tomg@math.brown.edu The book Jiri Matousek. Using the Borsuk-Ulam Theorem; Lectures on Topological Methods in Combinatorics and Geometry (Springer 2002). is very popular among nonspecialists as exceptionally well written introduction into topological methods used in combinatorics, discrete geometry and theoretical computer science. It may be a valuable source of information for those who want to get a general, user friendly idea what is going on before they start reading papers in computational topology (Carlsson's and others). For specialists it may serve as a great source of examples and motivation for their topology courses supplementing old and new "classics" like Munkres, Bredon, Hatcher etc. Rade Zivaljevic C-GTA seminar, Belgrade Example: Did you know that a simplified model for the frequency assignment problem in mobile communication can be, via graph coloring problem, related to basic equivarant topology (equivarant indices, Borsuk-Ulam type theorems) etc. > > Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2004 10:38:39 -0500 > From: Greg Friedman > Organization: Yale University Department of Mathematics > > A reply to Tom Goodwillie's question: > > I've always been a fan of "Elements of Algebraic Topology" by Munkres. > It essentially starts from scratch with simplicial complexes > (complices?) and does cover Cech cohomology by the end. There might be > a lot more in there than needed, but it's all covered quite well. > > Greg Friedman > >> Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2004 07:42:22 -0500 >> From: Tom Goodwillie >> >> For the list: >> >> David Mumford, who does applied math (pattern recognition) here at >> Brown, asks the following: >> >> "I have a student who has never done topology but needs to master >> some because of Gunnar Carlsson's latest stuff with clustering in >> high dimensional spaces. Can you recommend a good intro book, >> starting with basic finite simplicial complexes, lots of examples and >> -- if possible -- doing Cech coho?" >> >> I'll bet people on the list have some good answers. >> >> Tom Goodwillie >> >