You made it more complicated rather than making it simpler 
It is also not about "leading zeros" but a very simple integer comparison where we want a to be smaller than or equal to b and for example 0035 is bigger than 0031 and is rejected even though both have 2 leading zeros.
A simple explanation of mining IMO would be to compare it with rolling a dice.
Imagine if you wanted to get a number that is smaller than 3. You roll the dice and you have a chance of getting 2 and win on your first try but if you get something bigger like 5 you have to roll again. You do this random work of rolling the dice until you get a number that is smaller than or equal to your target.
That's mining. The only "math" in it is the integer comparison.
It is also not about "leading zeros" but a very simple integer comparison where we want a to be smaller than or equal to b and for example 0035 is bigger than 0031 and is rejected even though both have 2 leading zeros.
A simple explanation of mining IMO would be to compare it with rolling a dice.
Imagine if you wanted to get a number that is smaller than 3. You roll the dice and you have a chance of getting 2 and win on your first try but if you get something bigger like 5 you have to roll again. You do this random work of rolling the dice until you get a number that is smaller than or equal to your target.
That's mining. The only "math" in it is the integer comparison.
Lol, I guess I am really bad at explaining stuff
Thanks for posting this. This thread has made me more aware of the mining part now.
Also, I didn't know that the difficulty is inversely proportional to the target required to mine the block.
Can you or someone explain how is the difficulty calculated with respect to the target?