Instructor

Sandip Singh

Semester

Spring’ 21

Course Difficulty

The course builds upon the sets and adds some structure to them. The concept is new, but all the basics are covered in class. Putting a little more effort than the core courses, it should be manageable.

Time Commitment Required

It requires more time commitment than the core courses as the concepts taught are abstract and since the basics are taught in the beginning and the other concepts are built on that hence maintaining punctuality is important.

Grading Policy and Statistics

The grading policy was not that great, the cutoffs were similar to absolute grading.

Attendance Policy

There was no attendance policy

Pre-requisites

Real Analysis (MA 403) is a pre-requisite for this course as it takes some ideas and results of sets, metric spaces, continuity.. etc

Evaluation Scheme

Take home quizzes(10%) , in-class quiz (10%) , Midsem (30%) , Endsem(40% (take home))
This is subject to change, and it very much depends on the instructor.

Topics Covered in the Course

The course starts with defining Topological space and goes on to define topological properties like compactness and connectedness. It then builds the relation between topological spaces, also describing the notion of series, convergence, and metric spaces. Here is the brief list of topics covered:

Topological Spaces, Basis of topological space, Notion of closed sets, homeomorphism, Cartesian Products, Connectedness and compactness, Countability and separation axioms, Metrization theorems, Complete metric spaces and function spaces.

Teaching Style

The instructor had handwritten notes, which he used to present to the class as slides, and it was shared with students after the class. In case of any doubts, he used to solve in a separate sheet. All the proofs stated in the notes were not proven, but the instructor was open to any doubts, and on request, sir used to solve them.

Tutorials/Assignments/Projects

There were around eight tutorial sets provided during the course. The instructor would pick up random problems from the tutorial sheet and solve them during the tutorial sessions.

Feedback on Exams

All the exams were subjective and involved proving some results. The grading was strict, and thus one has to be careful while proving statements. Endsem was a take-home exam.

Motivation for taking this course

The concepts of topology is used in a wide variety of field, from Computer Science to physics to robotics. Topology is somewhat concerned with the geometric properties and thus is very applicable in various areas. Even though you may not see applications in this course, it is a good starting course to learn topology.

How strongly would I recommend this course?

If you are someone who is interested in math or might think that knowledge of topology is relevant and applicable to your area of research/interests then I would recommend this course.

When to take this course?

I took this in my 6th semester

References Used

Topology by James Munkres

Review By: Praneet Nayak