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Kinda same question as this one on Volume 1 of Tu's manifold series Reference request: Best way of studying Loring Tu's "An Introduction to Manifolds" incompletely, but with restrictions, but I removed "Best way" because stackexchange told me my question might be subjective.

Now I ask for Volume 3, Connections, Curvature, and Characteristic Classes: What's the interdependence of the sections please?

In two decades of teaching from this manuscript, I have generally been able to cover the first twenty-five sections in one semester, assuming a one-semester course on manifolds as the prerequisite. By judiciously leaving some of the sections as independent reading material, for example, Sections 9, 15, and 26, I have been able to cover the first thirty sections in one semester.

Does this mean Sections 9, 15 and 26 are not prerequisites for the rest of the book? Anything else?


From Volume 1: "This book has been conceived as the first volume of a tetralogy on geometry and topology. The second volume is Differential Forms in Algebraic Topology cited above. I hope that Volume 3, Differential Geometry: Connections, Curvature, and Characteristic Classes, will soon see the light of day. Volume 4, Elements of Equivariant Cohomology, a long-running joint project with Raoul Bott before his passing away in 2005, is still under revision.

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    What's your background and goal? (Also I'm not sure these books are strictly ordered into volumes, but that's a side note) More to the point, what do you wish to learn from the book? Also yes, 9, 15, and 26 are not really prerequisites for the rest of the book. Also what's your linear algebra/sheafs/algebraic topology/algebraic geometry background like? Any of those might make it easy to skip or skim the sections that introduce vector bundles and operations on them. – jgon May 29 '19 at 04:53
  • @jgon Thanks! Good questions. (I actually also noticed Volume 2 is not really a prerequisite of Volume 3) My background is Volume 1 (and will include Volume 2 I guess). My goal is to use Volumes 2 and 3 to replace From Calculus to Cohomology by Ib Madsen and Jørgen Tornehave. I wish to learn the topics in From Calculus to Cohomology, such as fundamental and volume forms, Riemann metrics/manifolds, Poincare duality, Gauss-Bonnet formulas, Thom isomorphism, Bianchi identities, Pontrjagin, Chern and Euler classes, connections, curvature, etc. –  May 29 '19 at 04:57

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