Classical differential geometry is the approach to geometry that takes full advantage of the introduction of numerical coordinates into a geometric space. This use of coordinates in geometry was the essential insight of Rene Descartes that allowed the invention of analytic geometry and paved the way for modern differential geometry. The basic object in differential geometry (and differential topology) is the smooth manifold. This is a topological space on which a sufficiently nice family of coordinate systems or "charts" is defined. The charts consist of locally defined n-tuples of functions. These functions should be sufficiently independent of each other so as to allow each point in their common domain.
