Pandas is an open-source data manipulation and analysis library for the Python programming language. It provides data structures for efficiently storing and manipulating large datasets, and it includes tools for reading and writing data between various formats like CSV, Excel, and databases. At the core of Pandas is the DataFrame object, a two-dimensional table that can hold multiple types of data and allows for flexible indexing and slicing, providing a SQL-like interface within Python. Pandas is widely used in data science, machine learning, scientific computing, and many types of data analytics because it offers powerful, expressive, and flexible data structures that make data manipulation and analysis more streamlined. Its functionality is often used in conjunction with other data analysis libraries like NumPy and plotting libraries like Matplotlib.