<br />Python's functools module includes the reduce() function, which is used for applying a function cumulatively to the items of an iterable, from left to right, to reduce the iterable to a single value. It's considered "special" because it's not a built-in function like map or filter and requires explicit importing from functools.<br />The reduce() function takes two arguments:<br /><br /> A function of two arguments (the accumulator and the next element)<br /> An iterable (e.g., list, tuple) <br /><br />It applies the function to the first two items in the iterable, then applies the function to the result and the next item, and so on, until a single result is obtained.<br />
