2 fixed a few annoying typos and hope there are no more left

So my

My friend and I are attempting to learn about spectral sequences at the moment, and we've noticed a common theme in books about spectral sequences: no one seems to like talking about differentials.

While there are a few notable examples of this (for example, the transgression), it seems that by and large one is supposed to use the spectral sequence like one uses a long exact sequence of a pair- hope that you don't have to think too much about what that boundary map does.

So, after looking at some of the classical applications of the Serre spectral sequence in cohomology, we decided to open up the black box, and work through the construction of the spectral sequence associated to a filtration. And now that we've done that, and seen the definition f of the differential given there... we want some examples.

To be more specific, we were looking for an example of a filtration of a complex that is both nontrivial (i.e. its spectral sequence doesn't collapse at the $E^2$ page or anything silly like that) but still computable (i.e. we can actually, with enough patience, write down what all the differentials are on all the pages).

Notice that this is different than the question here: http://mathoverflow.net/questions/23297/simple-examples-for-the-use-of-spectral-sequences, though quite similar. We are looking for things that don't collapse, but specifically for the purpose of explicit computation (none of the answers there admit explicit computation of differentials except in trivial cases, I think).

For the moment I'm going to leave this not community wikiwikified, since I think the request for an answer is specific and non-subjective enough that a person who gives a good answer deserves higher reputation for it. If anyone with the power too to thinks otherwise, then feel free to hit it with the hammer.

1

# Spectral sequences: opening the black box slowly with an example

So my friend and I are attempting to learn about spectral sequences at the moment, and we've noticed a common theme in books about spectral sequences: no one seems to like talking about differentials.

While there are a few notable examples of this (for example, the transgression), it seems that by and large one is supposed to use the spectral sequence like one uses a long exact sequence of a pair- hope that you don't have to think too much about what that boundary map does.

So, after looking at some of the classical applications of the Serre spectral sequence in cohomology, we decided to open up the black box, and work through the construction of the spectral sequence associated to a filtration. And now that we've done that, and seen the definition f the differential given there... we want some examples.

To be more specific, we were looking for an example of a filtration of a complex that is both nontrivial (i.e. its spectral sequence doesn't collapse at the $E^2$ page or anything silly like that) but still computable (i.e. we can actually, with enough patience, write down what all the differentials are on all the pages).

Notice that this is different than the question here: http://mathoverflow.net/questions/23297/simple-examples-for-the-use-of-spectral-sequences, though quite similar. We are looking for things that don't collapse, but specifically for the purpose of explicit computation (none of the answers there admit explicit computation of differentials except in trivial cases, I think).

For the moment I'm going to leave this not community wiki, since I think the request for an answer is specific and non-subjective enough that a person who gives a good answer deserves higher reputation for it. If anyone with the power too thinks otherwise, then feel free to hit it with the hammer.