# The order of Klein 4 group

What is the order of Klein 4 group?

The Wikipedia said it is isomorphic to the Dihedral group of order 4.

But isomorphism preserves group order hence Klein 4 group should have group order 4.

But I couldn't find any elements in Klein 4 group has group order 4.( Since there are only 4 elements and each non-identity element is self inverse and thus has order of 2 )

Can anyone tell me where is going wrong?

• I think you're confusing two things: the order of a group, and the order of an element. They are different – D_S Dec 14 '19 at 4:45
• @rschwieb: Wikipedia does say the Klein group is isomorphic to the dihedral group of order four – J. W. Tanner Dec 15 '19 at 4:39
• @J.W.Tanner igh: I know what happened: page search on mobile didn’t search collapsed tabs. – rschwieb Dec 15 '19 at 13:02
• I have never heard the presentation with $n=2$ included. I had thought the whole point was symmetries of an $n$ gon, but it looks like the wiki article throws in that exceptional case. – rschwieb Dec 15 '19 at 13:06

The Klein group is isomorphic to $$\mathbb{Z}_2 \times \mathbb{Z}_2$$ (I am here using the convention that $$\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}=\mathbb{Z}_n$$ for $$n \in \mathbb{N}$$), so it is indeed of order $$4$$ not having however any element of order $$4$$ (all its nontrivial elements are of order $$2$$). You seem to be harbouring the expectation that if a finite group $$G$$ is of order $$n$$ then it will admit a certain element of order $$n$$, in other words that it will be cyclic, generated by that respective element; that of course very rarely is the case, as in only very particular situations will a finite group be cyclic!! The majority of them are rather not!!