The number of solve moves appears to be 4x the number of shuffle moves (?)
Most algorithm to solve the cube use some family of predefined blocks of moves. Each block of moves does something simple but interesting, like swapping two edges, or rotating two corners, without changing the rest of the cube. So you can start building one face and then slowly extend the solved part until all the cube is solved.
This is easy to memorize and to use, because all the decisions to use a block of moves are "greedy", you just fix another edge or you fix another corner, one by one.
The problem is that this approach doesn't provide the shorter solution. It's funny to make tree or four moves and then watch someone else use a few hundreds of moves to solve the cube.