TITLE: Why does the Euler characteristic of a toric variety equal the number of vertices in the defining polytope?
QUESTION [5 upvotes]: In this link, Corollary 3.2.2, page 59 the author claims that: The Euler characteristic of the toric variety $X_K$ associated to a convex polytope $K$ is the number of vertices of $K$.
I want to see how it works.  Could someone please illustrate this for me by using this method to compute the Euler characteristic of $\mathbb{P}^{2}$ and $\mathbb{P}^{1}\times \mathbb{P}^{1}$?  Thanks so much.

REPLY [16 votes]: Merely observe that a toric variety is the union of torus orbits $(\mathbb C^\*)^r$ for various dimensions $r$, and that the Euler characteristic of $(\mathbb C^\*)^r$ is zero if $r>0$ and $1$ if $r=0$. 
Vertices of a polytope correspond to 0-dimensional orbits, $r$-dimensional faces -- to $r$-dimensional orbits.
$\mathbb P^2$ corresponds to a triangle, $\mathbb P^1\times\mathbb P^1$ to a square. It is not very hard to count their vertices.