For a subgroup of a finite group , Lagrange's theorem states . Thus a subgroup's order, and in particular the order of a group element, divides .
For , if every element had order one or two, the order of a finite group of exponent two would make a power of two, a contradiction. Hence an element has order five or ten. In the latter case is the cyclic group . Otherwise choose of order five. Its cyclic subgroup has index two and is therefore a normal subgroup.
In the noncyclic case an element outside has order two: its order divides ten, it cannot have order ten, and an element of order five has trivial image in the order-two quotient group . Every element of is then or . Conjugation by restricts to an automorphism of , say . Since , , so or modulo five.
For , the generators commute and has order ten, yielding the cyclic case. For , these are the relations of the dihedral group of the pentagon. The classification of groups of order ten is therefore exactly and , where the subscript on denotes its order. They are not isomorphic because one is Abelian and the other is not.