<-- notice that the 3 must be inside parentheses as a coefficient of sin(x). That was an error you made. That is, the 3 is squared along with the sin(x). The way you had it the 3 was not squared as it should have been. Since the cosine is sometimes negative, but the square root of its square when written with a radical is never negative. Therefore we must put absolute value bars around the square root to prevent it from ever being negative: Answer Edwin