Here is the mother load: http://www.math.upenn.edu/~ghrist/notes.html http://www.math.upenn.edu/~ghrist/notes.html I would recommend diving in with wild abando

Here is the mother load: http://www.math.upenn.edu/~ghrist/notes.html http://www.math.upenn.edu/~ghrist/notes.html I would recommend diving in with wild abandon, Ie. don't be afraid of the heavy sounding math, Ghrist does a great job of holding your hand. This field is called "Applied Topology" and is distinct from manifold learning, IIUC. The photo from the article has a mention of "barcodes": http://www.math.upenn.edu/~ghrist/preprints/barcodes.pdf http://www.math.upenn.edu/~ghrist/preprints/barcodes.pdf The fascinating this about all of this is how topological (connectivity) information is extracted from messy data.