AbstractInteractive data analysis tools strongly depend on the ability to select data of interest and select options that quickly modify the display of information. The definition of Visual Analytics even explicitly includes that this science is ‘supported by interactive visual interfaces’. Brushing is the oldest and most generic term that refers to the selection of data. In its first appearance in interactive statistical graphics, brushing was introduced for scatterplot matrices (SPLOMs) by Becker and Cleveland1, but the basic idea of the selection and isolation of a subset of data was already mentioned in Tukey's landmark paper on PRIM‐92. This review gives a broad overview over selection tools and selection modes in general and illustrates actual implementations of these ideas. WIREs Comp Stat 2010 2 704–710 DOI: 10.1002/wics.132This article is categorized under: Statistical and Graphical Methods of Data Analysis > Statistical Graphics and Visualization Statistical and Graphical Methods of Data Analysis > Analysis of High Dimensional Data