Opinion: Split Times, Speed, Acceleration: What the Olympics Can Teach Kids About Math

Math often feels disconnected from the real lives of students. They learn the steps, solve equations and check their work, but they struggle to see the usefulness of math skills.

For decades, educators have searched for better ways to answer a question students ask — sometimes aloud, sometimes silently — every day: Why does this matter? RAND’s American Youth Panel survey this summer found nearly half of U.S. middle and high schoolers reported losing interest in math about half or more of the time during class, and three-quarters said they lose interest at least sometimes.

Teachers are echoing a similar sentiment — three-fourths of educators surveyed in the most recent Savvas Educator Index cited lack of student motivation as a leading challenge for the 2025-26 school year, with half of those respondents saying it is the top challenge students face. In math classrooms, where young people often feel anxious and struggle to understand how the material connects to everyday situations, motivating students is especially difficult.

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As a former math teacher and administrator, I know there is certainly no lack of rigor or standards. The real difficulty is in helping students see how mathematical thinking shows up beyond worksheets and tests.

Events that students already pay attention to can help make math feel real. The Winter Olympics, for example, offer ready-made ways to connect math instruction to real-world problem solving, without adding new curriculum or instructional time.

Already top of mind for many students, the Olympics are filled with mathematics hiding in plain sight. The most obvious example is the stopwatch. Who wins gold, silver or bronze is frequently determined by hundredths of a second, making mathematical precision more than an abstract idea. Students analyzing race times can explore decimals, rounding and margins of error while seeing firsthand why accuracy matters when outcomes are this close. Suddenly, numbers start to carry true weight.

Ratios and proportions also emerge naturally in the Olympics. Torch relay data, for example, can teach students to compare distances covered by different runners for each leg, calculate average pace times and compare how they change day to day. These kinds of problems let students practice proportional reasoning and see how math can be used to coordinate complex events.

Data analysis becomes equally meaningful when students examine medal counts, scoring systems or competitors’ performance trends over time. Moving beyond reading charts to interpreting them helps students build the kind of data literacy that is increasingly essential for landing high-paying jobs across many segments of the workforce.

Speed, acceleration and force are no longer abstract ideas when students analyze downhill skiing or bobsledding. Comparing angles of descent or calculating velocity connects formulas to movement that students can see and replay. Math moves from a set of memorization procedures to a way of understanding the physical world.

What makes these approaches powerful is their accessibility. Teachers do not need to overhaul their curriculum to make math relevant. Strong instructional materials, thoughtful task design and real-world examples that students already know about are enough — and they provide the kind of instruction that reflects what research and classroom experience consistently show. 

Students learn math best when they can talk about it, explore it and connect it to something meaningful or recognizable in their everyday lives. Problems that invite different approaches to solving problems, such as drawing models or explaining reasoning out loud, help students build confidence — particularly those who have learned to fear being wrong. Relevance supports rigor by encouraging deep thinking and a personal investment in finding answers.

The Olympics will eventually fade from the headlines, but the bigger lesson is in recognizing that the world offers constant, mathematically rich moments waiting to be used. 

At a time when schools are under intense pressure to raise achievement and prepare students for a rapidly changing economy, relevance is not optional. students. It plays a direct role in whether students stay engaged and persist through challenging material. When young people can see how math connects to the world around them, they are more likely to participate, take risks and build confidence. When they cannot, math can feel abstract and disconnected, leading students to disengage and view it as a burden rather than a useful skill.

Grounding math in real-world problem solving means looking beyond textbooks to places where students might naturally encounter math in the world outside of the classroom — like the Winter Olympics. When educators consistently make those connections, math changes from something students endure to something they can use. That shift is essential to improving both engagement and outcomes.