Pandas Passing Variable Names into Column Name

I think you can use subset created from list CONT:

print df
  age fnlwgt  capital-gain
0   a    9th             5
1   b    9th             6
2   c    8th             3

CONT = ['age','fnlwgt']

print df[CONT]
  age fnlwgt
0   a    9th
1   b    9th
2   c    8th

print df[CONT].count()
age       3
fnlwgt    3
dtype: int64

print df[['capital-gain']]
   capital-gain
0             5
1             6
2             3

Maybe better as list is dictionary, which is created by to_dict:

d = df[CONT].count().to_dict()
print d
{'age': 3, 'fnlwgt': 3}
print d['age']
3
print d['fnlwgt']
3