A binary tree is a type of tree data structure in which each node has at most two children, typically referred to as the left child and the right child. This structure is widely used in computer science due to its efficiency in searching and sorting tasks. A binary tree starts with a root node at the top, and each node below it can be connected to up to two child nodes. Binary trees can take on various forms, including full binary trees (where each node has either two children or none) and complete binary trees (where all levels except possibly the last are completely filled). One of the most common uses of binary trees is in binary search trees (BSTs), where the left child contains a value less than its parent node and the right child contains a value greater than its parent. This property allows for fast lookup, insertion, and deletion of elements, with time complexity of O(log n) in the best case. Binary trees are also used to implement other structures like heaps and priority queues. Understanding binary trees is essential for algorithmic thinking, especially when dealing with recursive operations, depth-first search (DFS), and breadth-first search (BFS) traversal techniques.