Six (unusually sociable) hermits live on an otherwise deserted island. An infectious disease strikes the island. The disease has a 1-day infectious period and after that the person is immune (cannot get the disease again). Assume one of the hermits gets the disease (maybe from a piece of the Mir space station). He randomly visits one of the other hermits during his infectious period. If the visited hermit has not had the disease, he gets it and is infectious the following day. The visited hermit then visits another hermit. The disease is transmitted until an infectious hermit visits an immune hermit, and the disease dies out. There is one hermit visit per day. Assuming this pattern of behaviour, how many hermits can be expected, on the average, to get the disease? (from Using Statistics by Travers, Stout, Swift, and Sextro -- p67)
