1. A method for determining the short term waviness and long term waviness of a reflective surface comprising: impinging light radiation onto a portion of the surface at an angle relative to the plane of said surface; detecting discrete images created by the reflected light radiation; digitizing said images to create data points; storing said data points; calculating said short term waviness by mathematically processing said data points from each said discrete image to determine the average height of each said discrete image and then calculating the overall average based on a plurality of said average heights; and determining said long term waviness by first generating a reduced line for each said reflected image, fitting each said reduced line mathematically to produce an idealized fitted line, calculating the standard deviation of each said reduced line from said corresponding idealized line, and calculating an average standard deviation based on each said standard deviation.