I would still advise developing solid numeracy skills and less reliance on memorization. If you learn to divide with two or three-digit numbers without problems, you will always be faster than with the memorized values. I used to do it for fun too. For example, I still know all fractions like 1/3, 1/7, 1/13, … 1/97 by heart but never use them for arithmetic.
That’s correct, of course, but if someone is memorizing the sequences, they probably want to avoid doing the basic calculations. The fastest way is then usually the direct calculation.
Agreed. One one end of the spectrum, there is understanding with minimal memorization. As long as you know to start with 77 (2 digits) and follow what I wrote above, you can figure the rest out.
In the middle, is memorizing the sequences 076923 and 153864 (12 digits) and applying those to get the correct expansion for e.g. 7/13 = 0.538641…
The other extreme with minimal calculation and the greatest memory load is to memorize the 12 sets of repeating digits directly (72 digits total).
Different methods for different people / different goals.