Updating properties of only a given column

I am initializing all my datatables like this

$('.dataTable').dataTable({
"sPaginationType" : "full_numbers"
});

After I have done the initialization, I now want to set properties on some of the columns of a specific datatable.

Is there a function like getColumnByName that I can use and then use the column object to set some properties on it ?

In pseudo-code this is what I would like to do:

var column = myTableObj.getColumnByName("aNumericColumn");
column.setRenderer("RenderDecimalNumber");
column.setProperty("decimalPlaces" , "2");

myTableObj.redraw();