Topology is really distinct from the other two. Roughly speaking, topology is the study of those properties of a geometric space that do not depend on notions such as distance or angles. Within topology, the surface of a sphere is considered to be the same as the surface of a cube, though these can be distinguished from the surface of a doughnut (i.e. a torus). Topology is also concerned with a much broader class of geometric spaces than the other two, including manifolds, complexes, spaces of functions, and more general topological spaces. The basics of topology are a foundational subject for large portions of mathematics, and most advanced (i.e. graduate-level) treatments of differential geometry assume at least some topology as a prerequisite.
Differential and Riemannian geometry, by contrast, are concerned mainly with manifolds (i.e. curves, surfaces, and their higher-dimensional analogues), and involve notions such as distance, angle, and curvature, as well as the heavy use of differential calculus.
The distinction between differential geometry and Riemannian geometry is subtle.
Riemannian geometry describes a certain approach or point of view towards differential geometry, where the primary objects of study are abstract differentiable manifolds endowed with Riemannian metrics. This approach has been extraordinarily fruitful, and at this point the vast majority of differential geometry clearly falls under the Riemannian framework. Indeed, "differential geometry" and "Riemannian geometry" are sometimes described as synonyms.
At the same time, there are a few subjects within differential geometry that don't really fall within Riemannian geometry. For example, the relatively new fields of symplectic geometry (which is related to Hamiltonian mechanics) and contact geometry study geometric structures that can be placed on a differentiable manifold that are quite distinct from a Riemannian metric, though some would argue that these subjects aren't part of differential geometry either. But even Lorentzian manifolds (quite important in general relativity) aren't strictly speaking Riemannian manifolds, though they are considered "pseudo-Reimannian" and the study of them is quite similar to Riemannian geometry. Finally, folks who study arbitrary connections or even synthetic differential geometry have arguably moved on from Riemannian geometry to something more general.
There are also classical aspects of the study of differential geometry that haven't quite been absorbed into the Riemannian framework, such as the study of curves and surfaces in two and three dimensions. Roughly speaking, Riemannian geometry is concerned with the intrinsic properties of a manifold, so any geometric properties that are extrinsic, i.e. depend on an embedding into an ambient space, don't really fall under Riemannian geometry. Thus Gaussian curvature is a Riemannian concept, but mean curvature and the study of minimal surfaces (i.e. the shapes made by soap films) is really distinct from Riemannian geometry.
1)Follows from 3. In 3) $a$ represents a direction (actually normal to a direction), and $b$ represents a distance from the origin -- or $\left |\frac {b}{a}\right|$ does.
2)In cartesian:
$\left|\begin {array} {} x_1&y_1&1\\x_2&y_2&1\\x_3&y_3&1\end{array}\right| = 0$ suggests $(x_1,y_1), (x_2,y_2), (x_3,y_3)$ are colinear
-- or the pyramid formed by the 3 points in the plane $z = 1$ together with the origin forms a pyramid of zero volume.
$\begin {bmatrix} {} z_1&\bar z_1&1\\z_2&\bar z_2&1\\z_3&\bar z_3&1\end{bmatrix} = \begin {bmatrix} x_1&y_1&1\\x_2&y_2&1\\x_3&y_3&1\end{bmatrix}\begin {bmatrix} 1&1&0\\i&-i&0\\0&0&1\end{bmatrix}$
The right most matrix is non-sigular.
6)$\overline{(z-z_1)}(z-z_2) = k$ is the locus of points $z$ such that $\angle z_1zz_2$ is constant.
7)is the very definition of an ellipse. The distance from one focus to a point on the ellipse to the other focus is constant.
10)$|z - z_1| = k|z-z_2|\\
(z - z_1)\overline (z-z_1) = k^2 (z - z_2)\overline (z-z_2)\\
x^2 + y^2 + 2xx_1 + 2yy_1 + x_1^2 + y_1^2 = k^2(x^2 + y^2 + 2xx_2 + 2yy_2 + x_2^2 + y_2^2)\\
(k^2 - 1)(x^2 - a)^2 + (k^2 - 1)(y^2 - b)^2 = r^2$
Best Answer
The excellent AoPS text
has three chapters on complex numbers.
Those chapters have lots of challenging geometry problems for which complex numbers provide a better insight and a simpler solution.
The entire book is oriented to contest-math-related theory and problems.