Olympic Records


This activity encourages students to make sense of graphical data, and challenges them to apply their own knowledge about athletics to explain and interpret the graphs. It is designed to be accessible to secondary maths students at Key Stage 3.

Detailed teachers' notes for this activity are available on our NRICH website.



Olympic Records

Here are ten graphs showing how Olympic records have changed over time in ten athletic events. You can click on the links to view each graph, or download this PDF with all the graphs.

Can you deduce which event each graph represents?

Here are some questions to consider, which may help you to make sense of the graphs:

  • Can you determine what the units might be on the vertical axis for each graph?
  • Why do some graphs show a decreasing trend and some an increasing trend?
  • Are there any unusual features on any of the graphs? Can you think of a plausible explanation for them?

Thanks to Alan Parr for suggesting this problem.

Further information

If you're finding hard to get started, try looking at this hint.

Detailed teachers' notes for this activity are available on our NRICH website, where you can also find some featured solutions.