Comment by Celso ??? May 14, 2013 @ 9:30 am | Reply When M is a manifold and N is a finite-sheeted covering space, it???s quite common for the betti numbers of N to be larger than the betti numbers of M. (A standard argument with the transfer map shows that they???re never smaller ??? see Hatcher???s book on algebraic topology for details.) In fact, we now know that this always happens when M is a