Yesterday I was watching Inception and the question entered my mind:
at the end of the movie is he in a dream or in real life?

can somebody please help me answer this question by stating what they believe and why you think that.

It's kinda the point of the whole thing. You need to find your own meaning to it, and live with the bit of doubt as well.

As far as I have seen, the most common opinion is that the wobble the top makes just before the screen cuts to black means it's reality, though another logical solution would be that he has been in a dream world since testing the better anaesthetic.

Personally, I don't particularly care. I do think it's reality, but even if it isn't, it won't matter to Cobb, because he has finally found peace. He's with his kids again, everything is alright and he doesn't doubt it himself. He leaves the spinning top, because it truly does not matter to him any more. If it's a dream, it's a dream he would rather be in than reality, and if it's reality, there will never be a dream as pleasant.
And, to me, that is what matters more in this case.

But, you probably ought to make your own mind to this. After all, it does change the movie quite a bit, depending on which ending you believe in.

That movie was complicated enough as it was for a cliff-hanger ending. Anyhow, Cen pretty much what needed to be said: Interpret it the way you want to.

Anyway, to give this post some meaning, INCEPTION IN MATH.

f(x) = 23x+95                 g(x) = 8382

Find f(g). :D

Yeah, Cen explains it well.

I prefer to believe that the spinning top topples over. I've even read that some people hear it fall over in the credits, but I think they are just hearing what they want to.

Well, one other thing to take into account is that totems might not work in your own dreams, where you are the one in control. After all, that is the point of making a totem completely personal to you. You are the one who knows how it works, what it does to show reality and what it doesn't. If you are in your dream, alone, no one having manipulated or created the surroundings, no one in there with you, technically it should show everything as reality, since you are the one creating the dream.
Still calls for some kind of acceptance from Cobb, which might be bittersweet to the viewer, but might be the better of the results outside of it being reality.

I think.

Wait, when did they say that? I can't remember anyone being inside their own dream without someone else being cognitive on their own free will with them.

I believe they explain it when introducing Ariadne to the whole concept.
I will look it up in the movie in a moment when I go for another cup of tea, but until then, well, doesn't it make sense? If it's your dream, made in your own head, how is the characteristics of your totem going to be wrong from what you know? It's not like you forget such things just because you are dreaming.
Like Saito, when he falls on the carpet, and it doesn't feel right.

The purpose of the totem is to determine you are not in someone else's dream. As quoted from Arthur: "That way, when you look at your totem, you know beyond a doubt that you're not in someone else's dream."
So, for all we know, Cobb could be caught in his own dream, and just doesn't care anyway.

Which reminds me, I believe Limbo might work differently, since it's on such a deep level of dreaming that it has become some kind of collective sublevel of subconsciousness, that you are not in your own dreamscape any more, but in the entire human population's dreamscape, but that is just theory.

f(x) = 23x+95                 g(x) = 8382

Find f(g).

360.30?

360.30?

If I did it right, I think it's supposed to be 192881. I'm not sure because I haven't done it in ages.

Pretty sure you do 23(8382) +95.

thanks guys especially you canere.

But, you probably ought to make your own mind to this.

I have now the reasonings are simple now that I think of it.

my theory is that he is in a dream but his totem doesn't work because it is his dream and he controls the gravity of things. thus explaining the toppling over but on the other hand he doesn't care because he is with his children. some other people might say that if he was in dream his wife would be there. what I think is that he finally back with his children making his mind at  peace with her death. also at the beginning he is in limbo with the asian guy (sorry can't remember his name). this means that the movie ended in a dream and he had died some way in the dream. thus when he died in limbo it is just like nothing had happened because of the time span in the dream he was in. you see in the last dream in which he had died a life time was like one minute in the real world. so he was in a dream the whole time until he finally woke up on the plane and went home to his children.

just in case you are back tracking that yes I did change my solution in the end.