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I am teaching an independent-reading course from Simon's "Representations of finite and compact groups". I chose this book based on fond memories from a previous reading course in which I had participated as assistant, but then discovered that it has no exercises. At least for the early material, I'm not finding it easy to create relevant exercises myself.

Is it appropriate to ask if anyone has references to books, or online resources for other courses, that would have relevant exercises? This isn't exactly a research-level mathematics question, but I have seen other questions here on course organisation (though maybe more about appropriate content than this kind of nitty-gritty detail).

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Generally speaking, there is certainly ample precedent on MathOverflow for questions regarding teaching, which seems not inappropriate since teaching is frequently a major component of careers of professional mathematicians. In other words, there seems to be some tacit understanding that MO is (historically) not only a research questions-and-answers site, but more broadly a site for questions and answers which are likely to be of interest to this population, and there is certainly no lack of upvoted open questions which are not purely research-oriented but which touch upon philosophy, teaching, collective self-images, and so on. There is a good chance your question would fly.

But I would strongly recommend that you also consider using https://matheducators.stackexchange.com/, as this seems to be a better fit for your question. The only drawback might be that the population of users there is smaller and you wouldn't get the answers you need, in which case you could then post at MO (linking of course to your Math Educators post).

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    $\begingroup$ Sure -- but the suggested question is about a particular book, and thus maybe not of particularly broad interest, I think. $\endgroup$
    – Stefan Kohl Mod
    Commented Aug 29, 2014 at 21:12
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    $\begingroup$ Thanks, Todd—I have done just what you suggested, at matheducators.stackexchange.com/questions/4301/…. $\endgroup$
    – LSpice
    Commented Aug 29, 2014 at 23:44
  • $\begingroup$ @StefanKohl I imagine it being less about a specific book and more about a subject area that the book is about (a subject that is moreover treated in hundreds of other places, and one of fairly broad interest). $\endgroup$
    – Todd Trimble Mod
    Commented Aug 29, 2014 at 23:59

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