In [this link][1], Corollary 3.2.2, page 59 the author claims that: The Euler characteristic of the toric variety $X_K$ associated to a convex polytope $K$ is the number of vertices of $K$. I want to see how it works. Could someone please illustrate this for me by using this method to compute the Euler characteristic of $\mathbb{P}^{2}$ and $\mathbb{P}^{1}\times \mathbb{P}^{1}$? Thanks so much. [1]: http://www.math.leidenuniv.nl/scripties/Trevisan.pdf