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16 votes
4 answers
2k views

Coboundaries and Gluing in Cech Cohomology - Intuition?

I'm trying to develop an intuition for Cech cohomology geometrically, but am currently failing. A lot of people seem to say that the groups $H^n$ measure obstructions to gluing local sections to get ...
Edward Hughes's user avatar
66 votes
4 answers
11k views

Is there a good way to think of vanishing cycles and nearby cycles?

Once in a while I run into literature that invokes vanishing cycle machinery with a cryptic sentence like, "this follows from a standard vanishing cycle argument." Is there a good way to look at ...
S. Carnahan's user avatar
  • 45.7k
35 votes
5 answers
4k views

Heuristic explanation of why we lose projectives in sheaves.

We know that presheaves of any category have enough projectives and that sheaves do not, why is this, and how does it effect our thinking? This question was asked(and I found it very helpful) but I ...
B. Bischof's user avatar
  • 4,842