I thought I'd share a couple of my favorite Maya tips.

1. You can tumble ortho views. This is especially useful for technical illustration. Just toggle off "Orthographic Views:locked" in the tumble tool settings.

2. One can directly type expressions inside numeric edit cells in the attribute editor. Just click inside any numeric field and type "=". This puts the cell into expression mode. Whatever you type after the "=" is then turned into an expression node when you hit return. Expressions can use the keywords "time" and "frame". Thus if one typed
= time
into the ytranslate edit cell for an object, the object will now move uniformly upward where its height is equal to the current time in seconds.

To make it go half as fast simply type:
=time * .5

To make it jump in a totally random fashion type:
=random(1.0)

To make it wiggle up and down in a random yet smooth fashion you can use the noise function. Type:
= noise( time )

To make it wiggle up and down in a uniform fashion type:
= sin( time )

To make it lock to the y position of a second object called "sphere2" type:
= sphere2.ty

At any point you can rightmouse over the attribute name to open the expression editor for easy editing.