Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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31 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
a good book to combine with a regular textbook, December 3, 2002
This book has examples in it that are "missing", so to speak, from many regular topology books. It aims to shore up some of these shortcomings, with examples that the student can see and understand. There are charts and graphs, as well as a detailed explanation. Some "problems" often found in regular topology books are solved. Very few proofs, if any, are given. This is not a book meant to be studied without a regular textbook on topology, only to be used as an overall review of problems and short basic premises of topology. Use this in addition to your regular fare, but keep it close at hand when doing homework or preparing for an exam.
There are fundamentals on Cantor's Theorem, the countability or uncountability of sets, compactness, closed and bounded functions, open sets, continuity, connectedness, etc. All these are basic to topology, and this book does address them, but in a brief way. It then shows a basic overview of topology that helps greatly to understand the different fields of topology.
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23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Essential if you want to be good in point set topology, February 25, 2004
A distinct characteristic of point set topology is that it builds on counterexamples. If you thumb through any PST text, many theorems are in the form "If the space T is A,B,C, then the space is X,Y,Z". The point of point set topology (pun unintended) is too determine what A,B,C are, and to weaken the hypothesis. "Can we take condition B out? Maybe hypothesis C can be weaken considerably?" How can we answer these questions? You're right, by counterexamples. Students who want to master point set topology should know the various counterexamples, no matter how contrived or unnatural they seem. While textbooks usually present a counterexample to show why Theorem Three Point Five Oh will not work on a weaker assumption -- most students (and teachers) tend to skip these parts. A collection of counterexamples presented in this book (excellent organisation, by the way) is an essential supplement of a topology course; it enables one to 'see' between the points, so to speak.
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21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Book, December 11, 2001
As a graduate I encountered a book called "counter examples in analysis" which I found very useful. I always dreamed of such a book in topology, this book exceeds my dreams. It is great. It does not cover all the examples that I have used over the decades but it does cover some that I have never seen. The style is quite readable for a professional topologist. The book goes into a lot of interesting details (and some while not interesting to me would be another person). In short for me it is an essential book. The question is to whom else would this be interesting to. It is clearly of little use to a first year student and less to more advanced student. It's brand of topology is not the current cutting edge. So the audience for this book is limited to a small group and for these people it is top notch.
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