Or another possible way to do it is:
No of ways with at least 1 girl & at least 1 guy
= [No of total unrestricted ways] - [No of ways for all girls] - No of ways for all guys]
= 9c3 - 5c3 - 4c3
= 70
Anyway, back to the original question about the word "equation", there's a problem regarding 1234567's post, where 1234567 wrote:
"therefore the answer is
5c1 x 3c1 x 6c1 x 3! = 5402"
Actually, 5c1 x 3c1 x 6c1 x 3! = 540 not 5402
Also, 540 is still wrong since the highest amount of possible permutations (seeing as there's no letter repitions in the word "equation") is 8p3 = 336 (without any restricitons at all), and clearly the answer must be less than this. We can see that the unwanted permutations are those where all letters are vowels or all letters are consanants, so we subtract these.
No of total unrestricted permutations of the 3 letter word = 8p3
No of total permutations for the 3 letter word with ALL VOWELS = 5p3
No of total permutations of the 3 letter word with ALL CONSANANTS = 3p3
Therefore, the total number of words that can be made out of these letters containing at least a consanant and at least a vowel is:
8p3 - 5p3 - 3p3
= 270
I'm quite sure that 270 should be the answer. Gee I hate 3U probability, perms, and combos!