What is the primary role of the pandas library in data science?

The pandas library plays a crucial role in data science primarily by providing robust data structures and functions specifically designed for data manipulation and analysis. Pandas introduces two primary data structures: Series (1-dimensional) and DataFrame (2-dimensional), which allow for flexible storage and manipulation of data in a tabular format.

With these structures, users can easily perform various operations such as filtering, aggregating, reshaping, and joining data sets. Additionally, pandas supports handling missing data, time series data, and provides powerful tools for data cleaning and preparation, which are essential steps in any data analysis workflow.

By focusing on these aspects, pandas enables data scientists to efficiently and effectively prepare their data for further analysis and insights, forming a foundational component of the data science toolkit.