Agreed! As to the value per clap, it is a question of who is clapping for your article and how much they clap for your article relative to their usual activity.

I’ve had single claps as high in value as $4 and as low as $.01. It just depends on the readers activity. The only other factor Medium considers is read time, but this is likely to prevent fraud more than a compensation mechanism.

If you want to delve a little more into claps/earnings, Blogging Guide has a number of articles:

How Do Claps Work on Medium?

Also, if you want to help increase transparency, while still remaining anonymous, I’ve been doing an anonymous monthly earnings survey, which is still open for September:

Medium Earnings Survey — September