Course Name: MA 406: General Topology

Credits: 8

Course Type: Theory

Course Instructor: Prof. Ronnie Sebastian

Prerequisites: Formal: MA 403 (Real Analysis)
                           Informal: Some Linear Algebra was also used

Important Topics covered: Topological Spaces, Continuous Function, Open/closed sets, Interior, closure of a set, Connectedness, Path connectedness, Compact Sets, Separable Sets, Metric Spaces, Regular and Normal Spaces, Fundamental Groups, Path homotopies and an Introduction to Algebraic Topology 

Other Topics covered: Topological Groups (covered in exercises)

Useful Books: Topology, Second Edition by James Munkres

Lectures: No attendance policy, professor used blackboard throughout, the lectures were good but there was a lot of non-academic discussion going on during the lectures which I personally believe could have been avoided.

Assignments: A tutorial was held every week. The level of the tutorials was just below Munkres' problem sets. The grading policy was absolute and 40% was the cutoff for passing the course.

Exams and Grading: There was a quiz of 5 marks in every tutorial which helped in covering the syllabus as soon as it was taught. Midsem was of 30% weigh-tage and endsem of 40%. The professor kept a few questions on algebraic topology part for grades above 8. That means to get a grade above 8 it was necessary to solve those parts and good marks in it. The exact policy followed was unclear.

Useful online study materials/websites: There are many lectures available on topology online as it is a standard topic in math degrees. We took the course with MSc Math guys.

Advanced follow-up courses: Algebraic Topology, Topic in Topology, Differential Geometry (can be done without this but it is advisable to do it after

Pro Tips: If you go through Munkres' book thoroughly (Including problem sets), you would easily understand the subject

Respondent: Keshav Janyani