No doubt, there are some who would strenuously disagree with the assertion that mathematics has anything to do with transformation. Such people are very wrong indeed. For one thing, the whole idea of a mathematical 'function' is that you start with a certain input value (or set thereof), and that input gets transformed in some way. As well, some authors of transformation fiction -- perhaps most prominently Jack Chalker, in his Well World series -- have used mathematics itself as their transformative gimmick!

With the above decently said and acknowledged, here are two math-related links, one of them being serious and useful, and the other, rather less so...

Contrary to appearances, the World-Wide Web is not infinite -- as of this writing, Google doesn't index much more than four billion (4 * 10⁹) web pages, and there can't be more than, oh, two or three times that many, total. But even a paltry one billion web pages is too many for a human being to read in any practical length of time. So... what do you read? How do you determine which web pages are worth your time?

Enter: the Gematriculator. This helpful device uses a reliable, time-honored numerological technique -- gematria -- to determine exactly and precisely how Good and/or Evil a textual passage, or web page, actually is. As it happens, TSAT is 82% Good; Cubist's story A Good Run of Luck, which introduced his TBP character Jubatus, is 70% Good; and I'm Late, I'm Late, the beginning section of Bard's first LTF story, is 66% Good. Thus, the Gematriculator provides objective evidence that Cubist's work is better than Bard's. What more proof do you need of its accuracy?

Use the Gematriculator in good health.

So you want real mathematics? Functions and differentiation and integration, number theory and geometry and calculus, the whole nine yards? Have we got a website for you! It's called Mathworld, and it's another fine service from Wolfram Research, the fine company that publishes Mathematica, perhaps the finest pure math software on the face of the planet. Whatever your level of expertise (published mathematician, college student, layman with an interest in recreational mathematics, etc), and whatever your particular interest (Mersenne primes? the Fibonacci series? factoring large numbers? Fermat's Last Theorem? etc), Mathworld's got you covered. In depth, yet.

Go to Mathworld at your leisure.

If you know of any sites whose subject matter renders them suitable for inclusion in TSAT, send us the URL!