An Exposition on the Algebra and Computation of Persistent Homology

Abstract

We discuss the algebra behind the matrix reduction algorithm for persistent homology, as presented in the paper ''Computing Persistent Homology'' by Afra Zomorodian and Gunnar Carlsson, in the lens of the more modern characterization of persistence modules as functors from a poset category to a category of vector spaces over a field adopted by authors such as Peter Bubenik, Frederik Chazal, and Ulrich Bauer.