As it is currently, pandoc will export LaTeX maths snippets in a format that Org does not recognise as maths. The cause of this is mentioned in this point of that manual page:

To avoid conflicts with currency specifications, single ‘$’ characters are only recognized as math delimiters if the enclosed text contains at most two line breaks, is directly attached to the ‘$’ characters with no whitespace in between, and if the closing ‘$’ is followed by whitespace, punctuation or a dash. For the other delimiters, there is no such restriction, so when in doubt, use ‘(...)’ as inline math delimiters.

So, I can create a simple markdown file like

Say I have some $a$s and some $b$s. They are recognised as inline maths.

Clearly, these are parsed as maths elements:

~$ pandoc -f markdown -t latex inline-maths.mdSay I have some \(a\)s and some \(b\)s. They are recognised as inline maths.

Now, if I convert to Org

~$ pandoc -f markdown -t org inline-maths.mdSay I have some $a$s and some $b$s. They are recognised as inline maths.

Except, these are not maths elements in Org, due to the requirements quoted above, specifically

• "the closing ‘$’ is followed by whitespace, punctuation or a dash"

The form that Org better supports, and that acts as pandoc expects, is LaTeX-style delimiters.

Glad I was able to clear that up 🙂 I've updated the test suite to match, hopefully this all looks good to you now.