Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA) is an approach to analyzing data sets to summarize their main characteristics, often with visual methods. EDA involves techniques such as plotting graphs, generating summary statistics, and identifying patterns, trends, and anomalies in the data. This preliminary step helps data scientists understand the data's structure, spot outliers, and formulate hypotheses for further analysis. EDA is essential for gaining insights, making data-driven decisions, and guiding the selection of appropriate statistical or machine learning models.