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I'm reading Atiyah and MacDonald, and I would like to get through the whole book. There are some exercises in Chapter 2 in Atiyah and MacDonald about absolutely flat rings. However, it is in the section that uses the Tor functor, which I don't know about.

Are there exercises in the book that use these exercises or would it be safe to skip them? Can I do these exercises without understanding Tor and taking exercises 24-26 in Chapter 2 (the ones about Tor) for granted? Should I learn about the Tor functor to properly learn commutative algebra and later algebraic geometry at the level of Hartshorne?

Chris Z
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    These exercises are designed to be independent of the main text. It's certainly worthwhile to learn about Tor (and some of the associated general facts about homological algebra and derived functors), but it would be reasonable to postpone it. – Andrew Dudzik Nov 05 '15 at 06:38
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    If I recall correctly, none of the exercises is necessary to understand the main text. You should keep in mind that most of the interesting material (especially that related to algebraic geometry) is covered in the exercises. As a side note, since you are interested in algebraic geometry I suggest you have a look at Bosch's book, too, which has more focussed exercises. – A.P. Nov 05 '15 at 12:03

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