TITLE: How to think about CM rings?
QUESTION [40 upvotes]: There are a few questions about CM rings and depth.

Why would one consider the concept of depth? Is there any geometric meaning associated to that? The consideration of regular sequence is okay to me. (currently I'm regarding it as a generalization of not-a-zero-divisor that's needed to carry out induction argument, e.g. as in $\operatorname{dim} \frac{M}{(a_1,\cdots,a_n)M} = \operatorname{dim} M - n$ for $M$-regular sequence $a_1,\cdots,a_n$; correct me if I'm wrong!) But I don't understand why the length of a maximal regular sequence is of interest. Is it merely due to some technical consideration in cohomology that we want many $\operatorname{Ext}$ groups to vanish?
What does CM rings mean geometrically? As I read from Eisenbud's book, there doesn't seem to be an exact geometric concept that corresponds to it. Nonetheless I would still like to know about any geometric intuition of CM rings. I know that it should be locally equidimensional. Some examples of CM rings come from complete intersection (I read this from wiki). But what else?
Why do we care about CM rings? If I understand it correctly, CM rings <=> unmixedness theorem holds for every ideal for a noetherian ring, which should mean every closed subschemes have equidimensional irreducible components (and there's no embedded components). This looks quite restrictive.

Thanks!

REPLY [6 votes]: One way I think about Cohen-Macaulayness (probably not in largest generality but at least in context relevant to combinatorics) is as follows:
Think first of the ring of symmetric polynomials in $n$ variables. A remarkable fact from first year linear algebra is that this ring is a polynomial ring in some other variables, the elementary symmetric polynomials. 
Being a polynomial ring is rare (but this is a sort of role model). Being Cohen-Macaulay comes close. A Cohen Macaulay ring can be described as a direct sum where each summand $S_i$ is of the form $\eta_i R$, where $R$ is a polynomial rings (whose variables are the elements of a system of parameters) and $\eta_i$ are elements. Being a direct sum is important here. 
For graded rings such a description has remarkable combinatorial consequences.