A box plot, also known as a box-and-whisker plot, is a graphical representation of a dataset that displays its central tendency and variability. It summarizes data through five key statistics: the minimum, first quartile (Q1), median (Q2), third quartile (Q3), and maximum. The box represents the interquartile range (IQR), which contains the middle 50% of the data, while the "whiskers" extend to the minimum and maximum values. Box plots are useful for comparing distributions between different groups. They can highlight outliers, which are data points that fall significantly outside the range of the rest of the data. By visualizing the spread and skewness of the data, box plots help in understanding the overall distribution and identifying trends or anomalies.