Auditor of the month award sales skyrocket.

Yep I mistyped

Yes there is and it is important in a great many businesses. Hunterlabs is probably the largest business centered around color measurement (I know of). I recommend you click around their website.

In short, there are two main measurement methods, diffuse and spectral specular. Specular incorporates a surface's texture and will give different measurements for matte and glossy surfaces. Diffuse will specifically not include gloss effects.

For what the measurements are, they get translated into one of many, many colorspaces. A colorspace is just a way to define a color numerically. Often they are based on the limits of perception of the average human eye but not always. The ones I am most familiar with are Hunterlab's own L* a* b* space and CIE Yxy space. The "L*", "a*", "b*", "Y", "x", and "y" are the dimensions of the colorspace in much the same way as x, y, and z is in physics.

Higher on the street and I know it's my time to go.