In this expository paper we present some ideas of algebraic topology in a language accessible to non-specialists in the area. A $1$-cycle in a graph is a set C of edges such that every vertex is contained in an even number of edges from C. It is easy to check that the sum (modulo $2$) of $1$-cycles is a $1$-cycle. We start from the following problems: to find • the number of all $1$-cycles in a given graph; • a small number of $1$-cycles in a given graph such that any $1$-cycle is the sum of some of them. We consider generalizations (of these problems) to graphs with symmetry, to $2$-cycles in $2$-dimensional hypergraphs, and to certain configuration spaces of graphs (namely, to the square and the deleted square).
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Dzhenzher et al. (2024) studied this question.
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