My advice would be compare the two answers thus far and pick the performance and readability answer  and write a test for the method ensuring people do not break it.
I'm trying to create a magic Square function out of 2d list: [[8, 1, 6], [3, 5, 7], [4, 9, 2]], where It checks if all the columns adds up to 15 from a 3x3 square. I'm stuck on how to write function checks for the sum of columns if anyone can help out that will be highly appreciative. Without using numpy
How to Count columns from a 3x3 square