I'm trying to better understand singular homology groups. Standard examples like spheres and tori make it seem like $H_i(X)$ is generated by a subset that is in bijection with $i$-dimensional holes in $X$. Even more, they make it seem like those groups are freely generated by such subsets, but I guess it would be naive to think THAT might hold generally. Could someone throw some light on the way these groups relate to holes in a topological space? Also a short comment on what changes when we use a ring of coefficients different than $\mathbb{Z}$ would be appreciated.
I am studying homology groups and I am looking to try and develop, if possible, a little more intuition about what they actually mean. I've only been studying homology for a short while, so if possible I would prefer it if this could be kept relatively simple, but I imagine it is entirely possible there is no real answer to my query anyway.   As I said above, I want to gain a little deeper understanding of what the n-th homology group actually means: I can happily calculate away using Mayer-Vietoris but it doesn't really give me a great deal of intuition about what the n-th homology group actually means. For example, with homotopy groups, the fundamental group is in some sense a description of how loops behave on the object in question, and it is obvious to me why that is what it is for say, the torus or the circle. However, I have no idea what, if anything, I am actually saying about a triangulable object when I talk about it having 0-th homology group this or 1st homology group that.  The best I have been able to find online or in my limited book selection is the brief description "intuitively, the zeroth homology group counts how many disjoint pieces make up the shape and gives that many copies of $\Bbb Z$, while the other homology groups count different types of holes". What 'different types of holes' are there, roughly speaking? I appreciate that it may often be completely non-obvious what the low-order homology groups are for some complicated construction, but perhaps in simpler examples it might be more explicable. Are there (simple) cases where I could say, just from looking something like e.g. the torus, what its zero-th or first or second etc. homology group was based on the nature of the object? I guess in the zero-th case it is, as my source () above says, related to the number of disjoint pieces. Can we delve deeper than this for the other homology groups?   Any book/website suggestions would be welcomed (preferably websites as I am nowhere near a library!) - I have Hatcher but not a great deal else, and I haven't gleaned as much as I wish to from that alone. Of course I know that there is a great deal we don't know about homology groups even today, so I don't expect some magical all-encompassing answer, but any thoughts you could provide would be appreciated. I hope this question is appropriate for SE Mathematics, apologies if not! -M
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