"You may want to use 20 squares of paper with the statement numbers on them to shuffle into appropriate piles "
What shuffles into piles? "You"or "paper" or "statement numbers"? Can you explain why? Please try to make it simple and straightforward.
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Sign up to join this community"You may want to use 20 squares of paper with the statement numbers on them to shuffle into appropriate piles "
What shuffles into piles? "You"or "paper" or "statement numbers"? Can you explain why? Please try to make it simple and straightforward.
This is a poorly written sentence. You don't use paper squares to shuffle; you shuffle paper squares.
My guess (using the same reasoning as P.E. Dant in the comments) is that the author was trying to express the concept that you may want to perform the following actions in sequence:
[The fourth one is implied, since "shuffling" means to place in random order; you don't shuffle into different piles.]
Unfortunately, the author tried to merge all elements of the sequence into a single phrase. The result was confusing and, technically, incorrect.
The object of shuffle is usually a deck of cards or something that works like a deck of cards, but can also mean to scramble the order of.
Shuffle with a person as an object would mean to forcibly move a person to a random spot in line, unless he/she is made of cards (even then I don't know what that would actually mean). It would be extraordinarily unusual to command someone to shuffle themselves, so I'm very certain this isn't what is meant.
Shuffling numbers has a flavor of embezzlement, e.g. an accountant shifting around numbers to make things look better. I doubt the sentence means this since the context doesn't seem to strongly suggest this could be something happening. There is a also a possibility the context could be programming, i.e. statement numbers in a program, in which case I would doubt this is what's going to be shuffled as programs must be executed in their original order to work properly.
Squares of paper seems similar to cards and cards are definitely something that can be shuffled. So I'm certain that's what is meant unless surrounding context contradicts this.