1. A method for identifying a class of a component of a mixture in a sample, the method performed by a computer-based system having one or more I/O device and an instruction execution system, the method comprising: receiving ion intensity information obtained from the component of the mixture in the sample by the one or more I/O device; determining, by the instruction execution system, summed ion spectra from the ion intensity information; generating, by the instruction execution system, sample data from the summed ion spectra; comparing, by the instruction execution system, the sample data with reference summed ion spectra of multiple reference substances to determine correlations between the reference substances and the sample data, each reference substance belonging to a particular substance class; and identifying, by the instruction execution system, the class of the component of the mixture in the sample by evaluating the correlations of substance classes to determine which substance class most closely correlates to the sample data.