Quadratic probing is an open addressing scheme for resolving hash collisions in hash tables. It operates by taking the original hash index and adding successive values of a quadratic polynomial until an open slot is found. This helps avoid clustering better than linear probing but does not eliminate it. Quadratic probing provides good memory caching due to locality of reference, though linear probing has greater locality. The algorithm takes the initial hash value and subsequent values using a quadratic function to probe for open slots.