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I drew a rough sketch of $|\cos x|$ and would guess the correct answer to this integral is $4$ because I know the area under the curve of $\cos x$ from $0$ to $\pi/2$ is $1$, and there are $4$ such areas under $|\cos x|$ between $0$ and $2\pi$.

So if I rewrite the integral as ($4$ $\times$ integral from $0$ to $\pi/2$ $|\cos x|\operatorname{d}x$) I get the answer I expect. What I don't understand is why this evaluates correctly when the original form does not. Does it have something to do with the antiderivative of an absolute trig function? I've been saying it's $|\sin x|$ in this case - is this actually incorrect?

What is it that I need to look out for in cases like this?

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    You might as an exercise try to come up with an expression for an antiderivative of $|\cos x|$. Doable. But $|\sin x|$ is not it. Your first approach was good: In principle handle $\cos x \ge 0$ and $\cos x \lt 0$ separately, but be on the lookout for symmetry.2011-08-09

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Yes, it is incorrect to try to take $|\sin x|$ as an antiderivative. For example, notice that $|\sin(x)|$ is decreasing on $(\pi/2,\pi)$, so its derivative there is negative, while $|\cos(x)|$ is never negative. Your guess is correct about the value being 4 times the integral from $0$ to $\pi/2$.

One way to evaluate it is by writing the integral as $\int_0^{\pi/2}|\cos x|dx +\int_{\pi/2}^{3\pi/2}|\cos x|dx +\int_{3\pi/2}^{2\pi}|\cos x|dx,$ the intervals having been chosen where $\cos$ has constant sign. In each integral, the absolute value signs can be removed, and a minus sign should be added where appropriate.

This is a typical way of handling problems with absolute values. You can often break up the domain according to the sign of what is inside the absolute values to get several simpler expressions.