Thanks JimboZA,
Although I got a great deal of information before your post, you gave me the piece of the puzzle I was lacking. I hadn't understood just WHERE the current I needed to power, in this case, an LED was coming from. Having looked briefly at the datasheets for different chips and sensors I wasn't making the now obvious connection that the items current requirements was in there. I was under the assumption that 15mA (right?) was the rule of thumb for ALL LEDs, but now it's so obvious I could face-palm.
So using the following datasheet:
I would subtract 4V (maximum forward voltage) from the 5V the Arduino is putting out to get a drop voltage of 1V which using V = r * I would be 1V = r * 20mA or 1 / .2 = a 5 ? resistor? I combed the datasheet for any other values that looked right but theses were the only ones that seemed to fit the bill.