To discuss and resolve queries with students, IIT Madras organized an Interactive Session by Prof Hema A Murthy for NPTEL Online course "Programming, Data Structures and Algorithms" on 16th March 2016. Students from various departments along with the faculty Ms. Ashu Khurana, Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science & Engineering, Ms. Dipti Girdhar, Assistant Professor, Department of Applied Science & Engineering, Ms. Jyoti Pruthi, Assistant Professor, Department of Information Technology and Ms. Priyanka Mahani, Assistant Professor, Department of Electronics and Computer Engineering attended the session. The objective of this session was to discuss the problems faced by the students during the course.

Dr. Hema A. Murthy received her B.E. (1980) in Electronics and Communications Engineering from Osmania University, Hyderabad, India, M.E (1986) in Electrical and Computer Engineering from McMaster University, Canada, and Ph.D. (1992) in Computer Science and Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT - M), India. She worked as Scientific Officer with the Speech and Digital Systems Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bombay, India from 1980 - 1983. In 1988, she joined as a faculty in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT - M, India.

Dr. Hema started with a brief introduction of time complexity. In Computer Science, the time complexity of an algorithm quantifies the amount of time taken by an algorithm to run as a function of the length of the string representing the input. Then students asked a query from complexity.

Then she discussed about stack, queue and linked list. A stack is a container of objects that are inserted and removed according to the last - in first - out (LIFO) principle. In the pushdown stacks only two operations are allowed : push the item into the stack, and pop the item out of the stack. A stack is a limited access data structure - elements can be added and removed from the stack only at the top. Push adds an item to the top of the stack, pop removes the item from the top. A queue is a container of objects (a linear collection) that are inserted and removed according to the first - in first - out (FIFO) principle. An excellent example of a queue is a line of students in the food court of the UC. New additions to a line made to the back of the queue, while removal (or serving) happens in the front. After that students asked the queries.

The session was very interactive and beneficial for the students. Dr. Hema discussed the topics by giving real life examples. Some of the queries raised by students were also discussed and solved in the session through interactive means.

Dr. Hema concluded the session by giving tips about how to solve problems related to programming and data structures. She advised the students to be calm, have the right attitude, and focus on the basics and be always willing to learn something new.