Topology and Deep Learning

We utilize classical facts from topology to show that the classification problem in machine learning is always solvable under very mild conditions. Furthermore, given a training dataset, we show how topological formalism can be used to suggest the appropriate architectural choices for neural networks designed to be trained as classifiers on the data. Finally, we show how the architecture of a neural network cannot be chosen independently from the shape of the underlying data. To demonstrate these results, we provide example datasets and show how they are acted upon by neural nets, from this topological perspective.