You know lists. You access items by index: my_list[0], my_list[1]. But sometimes you want to look things up by name, not position. Imagine storing phone numbers.
With a list, you'd need to remember "Alice is at index , Bob is at index ." That's fragile. Add someone and indices shift. Dictionaries solve this. You store pairs: "Alice" maps to "-".
Look up "Alice" and get her number instantly. No indices to remember. In this section, I'll show you how to create, access, and manipulate dictionaries. By the end, you'll use them as naturally as lists.