A Few iWork Questions

I'm a student. Upon seeing iWork '09, I downloaded the trial and listed my Office for Mac on eBay. I may have jumped the gun, but I don't think I'll cancel my auction and just learn to use iWork. It seems a bit confusing. Just to figure out how to animate took some time. I have a few questions:

1. Why does iWork not include a citation maker or equation editor? Office has both...and I need both I have already started a paper in Word and made some equations in the equation editor...I'm going to transfer that paper to Pages, and I assume the equations will move with it because they're images...but if I need to put in more equations, is there anything available for free to allow me to make an equation and put it in Pages?
2. How do I test the animations in Keynote on a slide once I set them? In Powerpoint I can hit a play button on the animations pane and it'll run through the slide.
3. I've heard that the majority of people on this forum prefer Keynote and Pages to their Office counterparts, but Excel to Numbers. At this point in time, I only use Excel for pretty basic data tables and graphs...what exactly does Excel offer that Numbers cannot even come close to?
4. After using Office on Windows and Mac forever, will I be able to get used to iWork...especially for an important paper due in a few weeks and related important presentation for a month from now?
5. Why is the thing that seems to control a lot of things called "Inspector"? What exactly does it inspect?

Thanks