The article in question is at
http://www.nasdaq.com/article/what-is-bitcoin-mining-cm736542. I've added the italics to the relevant section, below:
The process of validating transactions and committing them to the blockchain involves solving a series of specialized math problems . . . Each Bitcoin miner is competing with all the other miners on the network to be the first one to correctly assemble the outstanding transactions into a block by solving those specialized math problems.
One gets the feeling that the author doesn't understand the nature of those "specialized math problems." Until authors like this do understand the hashing process, I think we can conclude that bitcoin is a long way from mass acceptance.
<re the forthcoming reply I could've quoted any of the to-date replies to the OP opting for the latter>
I'll agree with your sentiment including the use of
hash function (in lieu of) you've later offered up given that this wasn't published in the likes of Reader's Digest. This was on NASDAQ's official site where assumedly their reader base has a higher amount of education under their belts unless, that is, they're catering to uneducated Investards, then I stand corrected.