+296 How many 4-letter words with at least one vowel can be constructed from the letters A, B, C, D, and E? (Note that A and E are vowels, any word is valid, not just English language words, and letters may be used more than once.)
+6251 For this problem it's probably easiest to determine the number of 4 letter words with no vowels, and subtract that from the total number of possible words.
The number of words with no vowels is simply \(3^4\)
(do you see why?)
The total number of possible words is \(5^4\)
so the total number of words with at least 1 vowel is
\(n = 5^4 - 3^4 = 544\)
I suppose as a check we can do it the hard way. The number will be the sum of all words with 1, 2, 3, and 4 vowels. I.e.
\(2^1 \dbinom{4}{1}3^3+2^2 \dbinom{4}{2}3^2+2^3 \dbinom{4}{3} 3^1 + 2^4 = 544\)
