Error when trying to apply log method to pandas data frame column in Python

So, I am very new to Python and Pandas (and programming in general), but am having trouble with a seemingly simple function. So I created the following dataframe using data pulled with a SQL query (if you need to see the SQL query, let me know and I'll paste it)

spydata = pd.DataFrame(row,columns=['date','ticker','close', 'iv1m', 'iv3m'])
tickerlist = unique(spydata[spydata['date'] == '2013-05-31'])

After that, I have written a function to create some new columns in the dataframe using the data already held in it:

def demean(arr):
    arr['retlog'] = log(arr['close']/arr['close'].shift(1))

    arr['10dvol'] = sqrt(252)*sqrt(pd.rolling_std(arr['ret'] , 10 ))  
    arr['60dvol'] = sqrt(252)*sqrt(pd.rolling_std(arr['ret'] , 10 ))  
    arr['90dvol'] = sqrt(252)*sqrt(pd.rolling_std(arr['ret'] , 10 ))  
    arr['1060rat'] = arr['10dvol']/arr['60dvol']
    arr['1090rat'] = arr['10dvol']/arr['90dvol']
    arr['60dis'] = (arr['1060rat'] - arr['1060rat'].mean())/arr['1060rat'].std()
    arr['90dis'] = (arr['1090rat'] - arr['1090rat'].mean())/arr['1090rat'].std()
    return arr

The only part that I'm having a problem with is the first line of the function:

arr['retlog'] = log(arr['close']/arr['close'].shift(1))

Which, when I run, with this command, I get an error:

result = spydata.groupby(['ticker']).apply(demean)

Error:

    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
AttributeError                            Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-196-4a66225e12ea> in <module>()
----> 1 result = spydata.groupby(['ticker']).apply(demean)
      2 results2 = result[result.date == result.date.max()]
      3 

C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\pandas-0.11.0-py2.7-win32.egg\pandas\core\groupby.pyc in apply(self, func, *args, **kwargs)
    323         func = _intercept_function