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It is a bit easier to understand the homology $H_1(X, \mathbb Z)$ for various compact surfaces in analogy with handles and so on. There seems to be a nice intuitive picture with handles, holes, etc to think of the first homology group, and similar heuristics for higher homology groups.

But almost all axiomatic treatment of homology groups uses instead the relative homology. But it is not so intuitively clear how to visualize the relative homology groups.

What are some intuitive crutches for dealing with these relative homology groups, particularly for surfaces?

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    What definition of $H_k(X,\mathbb Z)$ and $H_k(X,A,\mathbb Z)$ are you using? Could you give us some details on why your intuition works in one case and not in the other?2010-11-25
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    A fun example to work out is the homology of the pair $(S^1\times S^1, \{0\}\times S^1)$. Just use the long exact sequence for a pair and the definition on the level of chains. Also, it's extremely useful to compare this to the homology of a torus with a contracted $S^1$, which looks like the end of this animation https://www.math.purdue.edu/~dvb/graph/vancycle.gif2016-12-12

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